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WINTER SKETCHES 



FROM THE SADDLE 



BY A SEPTUAGENARIAN 






JOHN CODMAN 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
®fje Ihtickcrborhfr 1$U»» 



I 



COPYRIGHT BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



TO 
GEORGE BANCROFT, 

THE OCTOGENARIAN EQUESTRIAN, 

THE HISTORIAN FOR ALL TIME, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS BY PERMISSION 

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. 



WINTER SKETCHES. 



CHAPTER I. 

Eqtiestrianopathy. — The Horse, the Saddle, and 
the Outfit. — Westchester County. — Ele- 
phants and Milk. — Decker s Institution. — 
A Tozvn of Churches. — Meeting of Old 
ScJwolmates. 

I have a favorite medical system, which 
I shall style Equestrianopathy. It is vastly 
superior to Allopathy, Homoeopathy, Elec- 
tropathy or pathy of any other kind. 

" When pain and anguish wring the brow," 
whether it comes from mental or physical de- 
pression, too much exercise of brain or stom- 
ach, dissipation of society or confinement in 
furnace-heated hotels or offices of the city, I 
resort to my remedy. 

From my boyhood I have adopted it when- 
ever opportunity offered, as a prophylactic as 
well as a cure. Many hundred miles have I 



2 WINTER SKETCHES. 

ridden over African deserts, South American 
pampas and the plains and mountains of Cali- 
fornia, Utah and Idaho ; and the miles trav- 
ersed in New York and New England might 
be counted by thousands. But for the horse I 
should long ago have been in the grave. 

" My kingdom for a horse ! " exclaimed 
Richard. The horse has been a kingdom for 
me. 

I could say with Campbell 

" Cease every joy to glimmer on my mind, 
But leave, oh leave the light of hope behind, " 

that light of hope being my saddle horse. 

The late Rev. Dr. Cutler of Brooklyn, when 
a feeble young man recovered his health by 
riding from Portland to Savannah. His valu- 
able life was prolonged to old age by this 
almost daily exercise. When one of his 
parishioners asked him how he could afford to 
keep a horse, his reply was " My dear sir. I 
cannot afford not to keep one." 

If your business confines you to the city, 
give the night two hours that you now steal 
from it, and take for the day two hours 
that you give for sleep. Take this clear gain 
of time for horseback exercise in the park. 



HORSE AND SADDLE. 3 

But if you are a man of leisure, ride through 
the country for days and weeks on long jour- 
neys, where constantly recurring changes di- 
vert the mind that stagnates in daily routine. 

Procure — I mean buy, own, an animal that is 
exclusively a saddle horse. A horse is like a 
servant in one especial respect, " A servant of 
all work " is perfect in nothing. She is a poor 
cook, a poor parlor-girl and a poor chamber- 
maid. A horse that goes double and single in 
harness and is likewise used under the saddle, 
walks, trots and lopes indifferently. A good 
driving and riding horse is a rare combination, 
and a horse generally used in harness is never 
capable of any prolonged journey under the 
saddle. 

Select a horse whose weight corresponds in 
proportion to your own. He should be a fast 
walker, a good trotter and an easy loper. A 
fast walk is the quality most desirable though 
not often sufficiently considered. Walk your 
horse half the time and divide the other half 
between the trot and the lope. Now as to the 
saddle. The little " pig skin" is adapted to 
hunting and is well enough for play and exer- 
cise in the park. It is used by exquisites who 
ape all things English. Did you ever notice 



4 WINTER SKETCHES. 

that such persons invariably carry a Malacca 
joint with a rectangular ivory or steel handle, a 
loop at the other end of the stick ? Ask them 
the use of it and they will tell you that it is 
the fashion. 

Really it is useful to country gentlemen 
of England, who, riding where lanes and gates 
abound, are enabled without dismounting, to 
catch the gate latch, and to close the gate 
after them with the handle. They also put a 
lash into the loop when hunting, but the thing 
is a useless encumbrance here. 

The English saddle is not well adapted to 
long journeys. It often galls the horse's back, 
which the unstuffed Mexican or McClellan 
never does, if properly put on far enough 
aft and with a blanket underneath. 

Especially is this true in regard to a lady's 
saddle. If a horse could speak he would tell 
you which he likes best. I wish that Balaam's 
ass when he was in a conversational mood, had 
said something definite on the subject of sad- 
dles. Be kind, while you are firm with your 
horse. Don't carry a whip — he will see it and 
suspect you. Wear light spurs, which are good 
persuasives and which he will think have 



DYSPEPSIA. 5 

touched him accidentally, while at the same 
time they serve to keep him awake. 

Loosen the girths frequently when you 
alight, and when you stop for anytime remove 
the saddle and wash his back. The beast will 
thank you with his grateful eyes. 

Do not give him water when hot, excepting 
enough to wet his mouth. Feed him when 
cool, but feed neither him nor yourself im- 
mediately before starting, nor when greatly fa- 
tigued. The neglect of this precaution may 
induce dyspepsia for a horse as well as for a 
man. I am writing for people upon whom this 
treatment is urged that they may avoid or be 
cured of that distressing malady. It is old as 
the world. It came from the indigestible ap- 
ples of the Garden of Eden. 

Virgil thus describes it : 

" — rostroque immanis vultur obunco 
Immortale jecur tondens fecundaque poenis 
Viscera rimaturque epulis, habitatque sub aito 
Pectore, nee fibris requies datur ulla renatis." 

That is a vivid description of dyspepsia. It 
is what the priestess thought as worth her 
while to take Aeneas down to hell to behold, 
that among other terrible sights he might see 
poor Tityus in one of its fits. 



6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Don't trust the most honest face in the 
world in the matter of oats. See them put 
into the manger, and hang about the stable 
until your horse is fed. Get your own dinner 
afterwards, for you are of less importance. If 
your table is not properly served you can com- 
plain. Your horse cannot. Do not overload 
him with much baggage. Dead weight tells 
upon him more that live weight. Dismount 
occasionally when about to descend a long or 
steep hill. You will thus relieve the horse and 
vary the exercise of your own muscles. Wear 
a woollen shirt and let him carry your night- 
shirt, hair-brush, tooth-brush, bathing sponge, 
a few collars and handkerchiefs ; they will weigh 
but little over two pounds and will be all suf- 
ficient. 

Feed your horse with four quarts of oats in 
the morning, two at noon and six at night, 
and with all the hay that he cares to eat. 

Now let us start on a short ride of twenty- 
eight miles and return. 

It is the middle of November, \x\, a season 
when the autumn has prematurely succumbed 
to the frosts of winter, and the scene of our 
departure is at Lake Mohegan, one of those 
beautiful and romantic basins among the hills 



WESTCHESTER COUNTY. J 

of Westchester County which divides its attrac- 
tions with its neighbors, Mahopac, Oscawana, 
Mohansic and Osceola, all of them within fifty 
miles of New York, and all, with the exception 
of Mahopac, little known and almost undis- 
turbed in the seclusion of nature. The people 
of the crowded city who go out of it in the sum- 
mer to the Kaaterskills, the White Mountains or 
to the greater altitudes in more distant Colora- 
do, surely have not informed themselves of the 
scarcely less romantic scenery and healthful cli- 
mate that is within their reach in an hour. Here 
in the hills, which almost deserve the name of 
mountains, are primeval forests and leafy sol- 
itudes, rushing torrents and quiet glens that need 
no distance to lend enchantment to the view. 
Most of this soil is too rough for remunerative 
agriculture, and it is difficult to understand how, 
with all their industry and economy, the hardy 
inhabitants manage to gain a livelihood. 

The roads were hard and smooth and the clat- 
ter of my horse's hoofs rang cheerily in the crisp 
air when I left Mohegan. A lively gallop soon 
brought us fourteen miles on our way easterly 
over the hills to the little village of Somerstown. 
Like a great castle on the Rhine, with its 
two or three adjacent appurtenances, a large 



8 WINTER SKETCHES. 

brick hotel looms up among the few small 
houses in its neighborhood. My curiosity was 
not only attracted by this disproportion, but by 
the statue of an elephant nearly as large as life ; 
I mean the life size of a small elephant, of 
course. 

This remarkable resemblance to the animal 
was mounted on a high post before the door 
of the hotel, and painted over the front of the 
building I read, in enormous letters, " Elephant 
Hotel." 

It was time to breathe my horse, and the 
ride had given me an appetite for any thing I 
might find within, even if it should prove to 
be an elephant steak. The landlord observed 
that " the women-folks were not at home, but 
he guessed he could find something." He ac- 
cordingly placed a cold turkey and a bottle of 
London porter on the table, and thus proved 
that his guess was very correct. As he sat 
down by my side, I asked him the meaning of 
all this elephantine display. 

" Why," he answered, " Hackaliaji Bayley 
built this house himself ! " 

" Hackaliah Bayley ! Who was he ? " 

" Who was Hackaliah Bayley 1 Don't you 
know ? He was the man who imported the 



HACKALIAH AND OLD BET. 9 

first elephant into these U-nited States — old 
Bet ; of course you have heard of old Bet ? " 

" No, I have not." 

" What, never heard of old Bet ! Well, sir, 
you are pretty well along in life. Where have 
you been all your days ? " 

I told him I had not spent them all in West- 
chester County. 

" I should rather think not," replied the land- 
lord, " or else you'd have heard of Hackaliah 
Bayley and old Bet. Right here, from this 
very spot, he started the first show in this 
country. Right around here is where they 
breed and winter wild animals to this day. 
Folks round here have grown rich out of the 
show business. There's men in this town that 
have been to Asia and Africa to get animals ; 
and Bayley's big circus (he was old Hackaliah's 
son) grew up out from the small beginning 
when Hackaliah imported old Bet, and that 
wasn't more than sixty or seventy years ago. 
Yes, sir ; Hackaliah began on that one she- 
elephant. He and a boy were all the company. 
They travelled nights and showed daytimes. 
Old Bet — she knew just how much every bridge 
in the country would bear before she put her 
foot on it. Bimeby they got a cage of monkeys 



10 WINTER SKETCHES. 

and carted them along, and gradually it got up 
to bears, lions, tigers, camels, boa-constrictors, 
alligators, Tom Thumb, hippopotamuses, and 
the fat woman — in fact, to where it is now. 
Yes, sir ; P. T. Barnum got the first rudiments 
of his education from Hackaliah Bayley right 
here in Somerstown. Elephants and milk have 
made this town. In fact, we all live on ele- 
phants and milk." 

" Elephants and milk ! Good gracious, " I 
exclaimed, " what a diet ! " 

"Lord, sir," retorted my landlord, " did 
you think I meant that we crumbled elephants 
into milk and ate 'em ? No ; I mean to say 
that the elephant business and the milk busi- 
ness are what have built up this place. I've 
told you what elephants have done for us, and 
now I'll tell you about milk. There's farmers 
round here owning a hundred cows apiece. 
From the little depot of Purdy's you'll pass a 
mile beyond this, we send eight thousand 
gallons of milk every day to New York ; and it 
starts from here pure, let me tell you, for we 
are honest, if we were brought up in the show 
business. Then right in our neighborhood are 
two condensed-milk factories, where they use 
seventeen thousand more. There's twenty- 



ELEPHANTS AND MILK. 1 1 

five thousand gallons. The farmers get twelve 
cents for it on the spot. So you see there is a 
revenue of three thousand dollars a day to this 
district. Now you've been telling me of the 
West, how they raise forty bushels of wheat to 
the acre, and all that. Well, what does it 
amount to by the time they get their returns, 
paying so much out in railroad freight ? You 
ride along this afternoon, and if you come back 
this way, tell me if the houses and fixings and 
things, especially the boys, and more particu- 
larly the gals, look any better in them fever- 
and-ague diggings than they do here, if we do 
live on elephants and milk! " 

And so I parted from Mr. Mead, with many 
thanks for the valuable information I should 
never have been likely to acquire by travelling 
on a railroad. 

I soon came to Purdy's station, and dis- 
mounting at the door of the factory was 
politely shown the various processes by which 
the raw material of cow product is manufact- 
ured and reduced. One gallon of pure milk 
is reduced to half a pint of the condensed, and 
to this sugar is added for long preservation, 
although it is not required if the milk is to be 
used in two or three weeks. There is perhaps 



12 WINTER SKETCHES. 

a greater assurance of purity in the new stock 
than in the old stock, which is liable to be 
watered ; still it might be readily imagined 
that arrowroot and other ingredients may 
form a basis for deception if the known integ- 
rity of those who manufacture it, did not 
place them above suspicion. 

As I jogged along upon my road I overtook 
a gentleman, of whom I enquired, " What is 
that large establishment we are approaching ?" 

" That, sir," he replied, " is Decker's, and I 
think it is well worth seeing ; I have often had 
a curiosity to enter it myself, and if you like 
we can now apply for admission." We drew 
up at the gates accordingly and permission to 
enter was readily granted by the custodian. 

" You will find the ladies at dinner just now, 
gentlemen, " he said, il but they will be happy 
to see you." 

He accordingly ushered us in, and we passed 
down between two rows of the occupants, who 
were so busily engaged with their meal that 
they scarcely noticed our presence. There 
were eighty-seven of them, and what struck us 
as very remarkable, they were dining in abso- 
lute silence. They were variously dressed, 
some in black, some in white, but red appeared 



DECKER'S. 



13 



to be the favorite color. It was gratifying to 
notice that none of them wore bangs or idiot 
fringes, although they all had switches and 
high projecting horn combs. We asked the 
superintendent if the ladies were at all re- 
strained in their liberty. " Oh, no, " he replied, 
" they have certain hours of the day at this 
season for a promenade upon the lawn, 
although we require them to be regular at 
their meals three times daily and to be always 
within doors at night. In summer we are not 
so strict ; in fact they then live most of the 
time in the open air." 

"Are they charity patients? " we asked, 
" or do they pay for their board and treat- 
ment?" "It is true, " he answered, ''that 
they do not come here of their own accord, 
but I do not believe that they could have such 
home comforts anywhere else. They like their 
quarters and are willing to pay for them. 
They do not pay in cash, but you observe that 
each one has her reticule in which she brings 
the proceeds of her day's work. We sendlt 
down to New York and sell it there." " But I 
do not see any gentlemen among them, " re- 
marked my acquaintance. The superinten- 
dent seemed somewhat confused as he replied 



14 WINTER SKETCHES. 

that establishments of this kind were more 
profitable when the boarders were ladies. 
Soon afterwards we left the building express- 
ing our thanks for the courtesy extended to 
us and taking a note of the sign over the en- 
trance, " Decker's Milk Dairy." 

We passed on over the rich meadow lands of 
a country so well adapted to milk farms by 
its natural properties and its nearness by rail- 
road to the city. There were many pretty 
and even elegant and capacious residences, 
evidently the homes of families who, combin- 
ing the utile cum dulce, must have other means 
of support besides the proceeds of these farms. 
Like Mr. Decker, they make lavish expendi- 
tures in economy, the result of which is, as many 
of these gentlemen farmers are ready to admit, a 
loss to them for what they charitably intend 
for a benefit to their neighbors in the instruc- 
tions given. Singularly^ however, the unedu- 
cated farmer generally prefers his own old 
way. Not caring for palatial barns, patent 
fodder and ensilage, he shelters his cows 
under rough sheds, feeds them on hay in 
the winter and turns them out to pasture 
in summer and makes a living from the pro- 



A TOWN OF CHURCHES. I 5 

ceeds, while his experimenting instructor is 
carrying his yearly account to the debit of 
profit and loss. 

Passing through the town of North Salem, 
five miles beyond, the apparently religious 
character of the people made a deep impres- 
sion upon me. Inquiring of a farmer who was 
driving along in a wagon by my side, he said 
that in a population of twenty-five hundred, 
there were eight different sects, each of course 
considering itself in the only straight and 
narrow path to heaven. "But," added my 
informant, "such a quarrelsome set of cusses 
you never did see. I guess the trouble is that 
religion is cut up into such small junks that 
nobody gets enough of it to do 'em any 
good." 

The border line is not well defined, but I 
knew that I was now in Connecticut, and that 
after riding half a dozen miles further, I should 
come to the village of Ridgefield, the home of 
my old friend and schoolmate, Dan Adams, 
where a hearty welcome awaited me. 

Dan is a retired physician — not that cele- 
brated advertiser "whose sands of life have 
nearly run out." I hope there is much sand 
yet left in the time-glass of my friend. He is 



!6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

one of those wise men (of whom there are few) 
who know that the grasshopper is likely soon 
to become a burden, and so contrive to make 
his weight light by husbanding their strength. 
How few among men know when to leave off 
business, and how few there are of these who 
can leave it off and be happy ! He is one of 
this small number to be envied. Twenty years 
ago he relinquished his practice in the city, and 
retired to this healthy spot. Here, with his 
charming family around him, his comfortable 
house, his elegant library, his pair of fine 
horses, his robust health, he is as happy as 
man can wish to be. 

After our dinner we two old fellows sat up 
far into the still hours of the night, and over a 
bowl of punch, such as we used clandestinely 
to quaff, talked of our school-boy days and 
playmates. We were at school at Amherst in 
the year 1829, and every five years we meet 
again on the old playground, for the school is 
still maintained. There the present genera- 
tion of boys look with wonder on the old gray- 
beards who fall into ranks— thinner ranks, alas, 
at every meeting ; and when they see us after 
roll-call at our regular game of foot-ball, their 
astonishment knows no bounds. And I will 



MEETING OF OLD SCHOOLMATES. \J 

tell you what boy — alas, that he has left us — 
could best kick the foot-ball, could best wres- 
tle, run fastest, was the most athletic gymnast, 
was the most jovial youngster, though perhaps 
the laziest student of us all — Henry Ward 
Beecher. " John, I never envied anybody but 
you/' he said not long ago, "and that only 
once. It was when you threw the spit ball at 
old Master Colton, and hit him square on the 
top of his bald head. I always missed him." 

We had a festive night, closing it with a 
sound sleep, won by exercise and pleasant 
reminiscences. In the morning a hearty break- 
fast, a warm adieu, and then a gallop back to 
Mohegan, stopping again for lunch at the cas- 
tle built by " Hackaliah Bayley, who imported 
the first elephant into these U-nited States — 
old Bet ; of course you've heard of old Bet." 

Now you too have heard the story, if you 
have never heard it 'before, and you know how 
two days may be passed enjoyably in the 
country in winter, while you are lying in bed, 
or loafing at your club, or in the hands of some 
doctor whose interest it is not to recommend 
to you the practice of equestrianopathy. 



CHAPTER II. 

Notes of a Road Journey from New York to 
Boston. — The Turnpikes. — Life in the 
Far mi Jtg Regions. — Religion in the " Hill 
Tozvns." — The " Commercial Room " at 
Hartford. — An Aged Amherst Instructor. 
— A Soldier of Napoleon. — The Old Stage 
House. 

I WAS once visiting in Southern California a 
ranch owned by an old Mexican gentleman 
who was unavoidably annexed when the terri- 
tory was acquired by the United States. The 
proprietor, whose surroundings indicated pros- 
perity although its modern accompaniments 
were wanting, nevertheless possessed an ele- 
gant carriage, which particularly attracted my 
attention because it was not in keeping with 
the other accessories of the estate. "That," 
said my venerable friend, as he tapped it with 
his cane, " belongs to my granddaughter. She 
was educated in San Francisco, and I bought 

18 



NO TES OF A ROAD JO URNE Y. 1 9 

it to please her, but I never use it myself. At 
my age of eighty-five it is not safe to take any 
risks, so I stick to my saddle." I will not say 
that I am so apprehensive of danger, for I 
frequently am transported from place to place 
in cabs, railway cars, and steamships, but my 
chief pleasure in locomotion is when I find 
myself, to use a Western phrase, " on the out- 
side of a horse." 

I had accepted an invitation to a Thanksgiv- 
ing dinner at Boston, and as I am the owner of 
a thoroughbred mare who might be idle for 
want of exercise in my absence, and as I myself 
had no business occupation which might not 
brook delay, I thought that an appetite for the 
turkey would be increased, and that I might at 
the same time refresh my memory by the 
sight of ancient landmarks, if I should saddle 
the mare and ride to my destination. 

I am perhaps a relative of one of the most 
valued correspondents of The Evening Post 
— at any rate, I belong to the family of the 
Old Boys. I have read with great interest his 
reminiscences of the highways and byways of 
New York City, and as his country cousin I 
proposed to investigate the highways and 
byways that connect the metropolis of busi- 



20 WINTER SKETCHES. 

ness and wealth with the metropolis of litera- 
ture and art. 

As a young boy, sixty-five years ago, I had 
travelled from Boston to New York in a stage- 
coach, and now as an old boy I desired to 
retrace my steps. There are few of us who 
would not wish to retrace the steps we have 
made in such a length of years, to correct our 
wanderings and to live our lives over again, 
following in the straight line of duty. 

I felt assured that after this long interval of 
time I could find my way back without much 
difficulty, as most of it would be over the old 
turnpike roads. I remembered the story that 
Long Tom Coffin tells in the " Pilot" of his 
wagon trip from Boston to Plymouth and of 
" the man who steered — and an easy berth he 
had of it ; for there his course lay atween walls 
of stone and fences ; and, as for his reckoning, 
why, they had stuck up bits of stone on end, 
with his day's work footed up ready to his 
hand, every half-league or so. Besides, the 
landmarks were so plenty that a man with half 
an eye might steer her, and no fear of getting 
to leeward." 

Fanny was never put to harness but once, 
and then she kicked herself out of it. I am 



THE NEUTRAL GROUND. 21' 

glad that she did, for nobody ever tried the 
experiment with her again. She is a solid 
beast eight years old, convex chest and long 
pasterns, weighs in horse parlance " nine 
hund'd and a half," with a straight back and 
high withers built up for the purpose. Her 
value — well, you can't buy her. 

She was at Irvington, and thither I went in 
an early morning train from New York, and 
started at eleven o'clock across the country to 
reach the old Boston post-road to New Haven, 
passing through the charming county of 
Westchester, the region of the " neutral 
ground " of the Revolution, made famous by 
the alternate occupancy of the American and 
British armies, the wild raids of the cowboys, 
the capture of Andre, and the romance of 
Cooper which has immortalized reality by 
clothing it in the garb of that enduring fiction, 
"The Spy." 

We were informed that we were now pass- 
ing through the property of an eminent finan- 
cier. Before he became the purchaser of these 
lands along the New York City and Northern 
Railroad reports were industriously circulated 
that fever and ague prevailed to an alarming 
extent. The lands were consequently sold at 



22 WINTER SKETCHES. 

a very low price. But after they had been 
bought there was an immediate sanitary im- 
provement, and they are now perfectly healthy, 
and are held at a high price. 

Riding through the pretty county town of 
White Plains over fine macadamized roads, 
bordered by many attractive residences, we 
came to Port Chester, where we fed our horses 
and dined, my companion, who had accompa- 
nied me thus far, to my great regret returning 
to Irvington. 

I was now upon the old stage road running 
closely by the side of the railway, but rising 
frequently over the hills from which far more 
extensive views of the Sound could be obtained 
than from the windows of the cars. There is a 
succession of large towns, villages, and country- 
houses that have all sprung into life since the 
days of the old stage-coach. The traveller of 
those times would recognize nothing now ex- 
cept the waters beyond the shore, and even 
these are covered by craft which to his eyes 
would seem strange as compared wi£h the tiny 
sloops that then answered all the purposes of 
traffic between the embryo cities of New York 
and Boston. Least of all would he understand 
the meaning of those tall poles crossed at their 



SIL ENT MONITORS. 2 3 

tops, and the network of wires that carry the 
unspoken messages we cannot hear, and of 
which they could not dream any more than 
they could imagine communication with the 
isolated stars, which may be a reality sixty-five 
years hence for the boy of seven years who 
now travels in the cars. 

The telegraph poles and wires were as serv- 
iceable to me as were the " walls of stone and 
fences " to Long Tom Coffin. I could not 
well miss my road to Norwalk where I passed 
the first night, and to New Haven, my second 
resting-place. On the third day, from New 
Haven to Hartford I had the same guidance, 
but the road was of a character entirely differ- 
ent. 

Were it not for those silent monitors, the 
gray forefathers of Connecticut might, if they 
could arise from their graves, walk almost from 
end to end of this old turnpike of thirty-six 
miles, connecting the former rival capitals of 
their State^ without perceiving even a shadow 
of change. Perhaps the houses by the wayside 
may have grown older, but they look as if they 
never could have been new. Their paint has 
not worn off, for painted they never were. 
They are not enclosed by " stones themselves 



24 WINTER SKETCHES. 

to ruin grown," for the stone walls stand at the 
borders of the road as they were laid up two 
centuries ago. Why is it that immortal man 
so soon becomes forgotten and unknown, while 
these old stone walls stand as they were piled, 
and from century to century bid defiance to 
the ravages of time ? 

I am sure that we all look with a reflection 
like this on the memorials of the past, and 
often ask of ourselves how it can be that he 
whose desire it is to live on and to live forever 
in this world of happiness which might increase 
as year follows year, should be cut off and 
consigned to the dust, while these inanimate 
things, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, enjoy- 
ing nothing, should be gifted with a useless 
immortality. 

Still, as I looked at the faces of some of 
those old farmers and talked with many of them 
who neither knew nor cared for anything in 
the outside world, I almost imagined that they 
were the men who had laid up these very walls, 
and that they too were stolidly immortal. Cer- 
tain I was that if their ancestors could come 
back to earth, they would be as much at home 
among their descendants as among the fences 
they had built. 



THE TURNPIKE. 25 

What strange ideas those old fellows had of 
road building. The engineers of their day, if 
engineers there were, were impressed with the 
conviction that a turnpike should be built in 
an absolutely straight line, no matter what ob- 
stacles there might be in the way. It never 
occurred to them that a fly could crawl around 
an orange with less effort than he would make 
in crawling over it, and that the distance would 
be the same. If the spire of the Strasbourg 
Cathedral had stood in their way, they would 
not have budged one inch to the right or to the 
left. Like ancient mariners before great circle 
sailing was adopted, they fully believed that 
from east to west was a direct course, and in 
trying to establish the mathematical axiom 
that a straight line forms the shortest connec- 
tion between two given points, they really 
succeeded in demonstrating its falsity. 

People who travel by rail through the new 
and prosperous towns that border the line be- 
tween New Haven and Hartford can form no 
idea of the contrast presented by the old route. 
Two distinct phases of civilization are apparent. 
Much has been said lately in the newspapers 
of the decay of religious observances in New 
England. This is true of places where the new 



26 WINTER SKETCHES. 

civilization prevails, for the railroad has dealt 
a heavy blow upon the theology of our fathers. 
One writer says truly that " these eastern coun- 
ties of Connecticut are not physically the best 
part of the State, but manufactories and rail- 
roads have opened new lines of worldly prosper- 
ity and have brought in a population that is 
little inclined to support religious services." 

On my road I passed through many "hill- 
towns," and as part of the journey was pursued 
on a Sunday, when at some times I followed 
the turnpike and at others the road near the rail- 
way, I was struck by the marked difference in 
the demeanor of the residents. Early in the 
morning the Roman Catholics of a railroad 
town were on their way to mass, with a view 
of compressing their " Sabbath " into an hour 
before breakfast, and then devoting themselves 
to amusement for the rest cf the day. Getting 
back into a hill-town a few hours afterwards, 
there was a cessation of all work, and not even 
a child dared to amuse itself. The quietude 
of nature seemed to have communicated itself 
to the souls of men and to the bodies of animals, 
and I believe that every horse thereabouts 
keeps an almanac in his brain, and that he can 
calculate with certainty upon his day of rest; 



SUNDA Y LA WS. 2J 

Men, women, and children were soberly wend- 
ing their way to meeting, keeping step as it 
were to the slow tolling of the bell, and happy 
indeed were these hill-town people when there 
was not heard the discordant clang from a rival 
belfry, but all of them were assembled in " the 
old meeting-house " as one flock under one 
shepherd. 

In the olden times it would have been very 
wicked to ride on the Sabbath through this 
country on horseback. Indeed, I can well re- 
member when such a practice would not have 
been tolerated in the immediate neighorhood of 
Boston. Riding and driving were both sinful, 
but the former was reprehensible in a higher 
degree. Sixty-five years ago no one would 
have dared to mount a horse on the Sabbath, 
and I recollect witnessing the arrest of a coun- 
tryman who having sold his load of wood on 
Saturday, was unable to return on account of 
the rain until Sunday morning. The excuse 
was not admitted and he was locked up until 
Monday. This happened six miles from Bos- 
ton in Dorchester, from whence came the first 
colony to these hill-towns and settled itself at 
Windsor. Its early history is an instructive 
study. It may aid us in getting rid of some 



28 WINTER SKETCHES. 

very erroneous ideas we have entertained of 
the intolerance of our Puritan forefathers, and 
we may thereby discern in what this sup- 
posed fault really consisted. We shall find 
that a more liberal spirit prevailed among the 
churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries than was afterwards exhibited in the 
earlier part of the nineteenth century, and per- 
haps even at the present day. It is true that 
there were some terrible preachers like Ed- 
wards, who, later on, endeavored to " per- 
suade men by the terrors of the law " ; but al- 
though the Assembly's catechism was taught 
on general principles as a text-book, — which 
might as well have been written in Greek or 
Hebrew, — and not infrequently, profoundly 
soporific, unintelligible, and consequently harm- 
less hydra-headed discourses on original sin 
and election were preached in the absence of 
such exciting topics as are now at hand, it is 
simple justice to the memory of the clergy of 
those days to say that in the main, their ser- 
mons were practical, conveying to men views 
of daily duty which they could not obtain 
through the mists of theology. Such was the 
teaching, for the most part, of the old minis- 
ters of New England. They were honest, 



NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS. 29 

faithful, good men. They were as truly the 
clergy of an established church as were the 
bishops and priests of the church from which 
they had seceded. The law of the state, 
founded on the pretence of religious liberty, 
but combining in itself civil and ecclesiastical 
power, delegated to them an almost absolute 
control over the religious and secular conduct of 
their parishioners. If one of them dared to do 
anything of which the minister might disap- 
prove he became an outcast from society as 
well as an " alien from the commonwealth of Is- 
rael." Whether men belonged to the church or 
not, they were by statute assessed for the sup- 
port of the gospel, and unless they " signed off " 
to become members of other societies, whether 
they went to meeting or not, they were 
obliged to contribute for the support of the 
gospel as preached in the old meeting-house. 

It was a most natural desire on the part of 
the established clergy to keep their flocks 
from straying into other fields. For this pur- 
pose they pursued a policy of conciliation. 
However much they might for want of 
other matter preach of " God's plans and his 
eternal purpose," all that they required of their 
hearers was a silent assent to what they could 



g WINTER SKETCHES. 

not understand as evidences of their faith in 
things not seen, and that their works should be 
in accord with the ten commandments, and 
especially with the eleventh, which they had 
taken the liberty to add. " Thou shalt go to 
meeting twice every Sabbath and pay thy 
parish taxes." 

A conformity to this obligation, in addition 
to a good moral life with due reticence of opin- 
ions, afforded sufficient evidence that a man 
was a Christian. In short, beyond the essen- 
tial requisite of a good character, the great 
point which the old ministers endeavored to 
bring to bear on their parishioners was that 
they should hold fast to the monopoly of relig- 
ious observances, and that they should combine 
to prevent all outsiders from religious action 
in opposition to it. 

These excellent men would not have for- 
given me for riding on horseback on the Sab- 
bath day, but I will atone for the offence 
by preaching from the saddle this sermon in 
vindication of them, bringing it to a close by 
quoting the simple yet comprehensive cov- 
enant, which they brought with them from 
their landing-place on the shores of New Eng- 
land, and which was a sufficient rule of prac- 



DORCHESTER COVENANT. ? l 

tice for them until a more modern theology 
introduced the bigotry which has been so 
falsely laid to their charge. 

" Dorchester, 
"Ye 23d day of ye 6th month (1630). 
"We, whose names are subscribed, being 
called of God to join ourselves together in 
Church communion, from our hearts'acknowl- 
edging our own unworthiness of such a privi- 
lege or of the least of God's mercies, and like- 
wise acknowledging our disability to keep cov- 
enant with God or to perform any spiritual 
duty which God calleth us unto, unless the 
Lord do enable us thereunto by his spirit 
dwelling in us, do, in the name of Christ Jesus, 
our Lord, and in trust and confidence of his 
free grace assisting us, freely covenant and 
bind ourselves solemnly, in the presence of 
God himself, his holy angels, and all his ser- 
vant^ here present, that we will, by his grace 
assisting us, endeavor constantly to walk to- 
gether as a right ordered congregation or 
church, according to all the holy rules of a 
church body, rightly established, so far as we 
do already know it to be our duty, or shall fur- 
ther understand it out of God's Holy Word, 
promising first, and above all, to cleave unto 
him as our chief and only good, and to our 
Lord Jesus Christ as our only spiritual hus- 
band and Lord, and our only High Priest and 
Prophet and King. And for the furthering of 



32 WINTER SKETCHES. 

us to keep this blessed communion with God, 
and with his Son Jesus Christ, and to grow up 
more fully herein, we do likewise promise, 
by his grace assisting us, to endeavor the es- 
tablishing among ourselves, of all his holy or- 
dinances which God hath appointed for his 
churches here on earth, and to observe all and 
every of them in such sort as shall be most 
agreeable to his will, opposing to the utmost of 
our power whatsoever is contrary thereunto, 
and bewailing from our hearts our own neglect 
thereof in former time, and our polluting our- 
selves therein with any sinful inventions of 
men. 

And, lastly, we do hereby covenant and prom- 
ise to further to our utmost power the best 
spiritual good of each other, and of all and 
every one that may become members of this 
congregation, by mutual instruction, reprehen- 
sion, exhortation, consolation, and spiritual 
watchfulness over one another for good ; and 
to be subject, in and for the Lord, to all the 
administrations and censures of the congrega- 
tion, so far as the same shall be guided accord- 
ing to the rules of God's Holy Word. Of the 
integrity of our hearts herein, we call God, the 
searcher of all hearts, to witness, beseeching 
him so to bless us in this and all other enter- 
prises, as we shall sincerely endeavor, by the 
assistance of his grace, to observe this holy 
covenant and all the branches of. it inviolably 
forever ; and where we shall fail for to wait on 



AGRICULTURAL DECAY. 33 

the Lord Jesus for pardon and for acceptance 
and for healing for his name's sake. 

Surely in this simple yet comprehensive 
covenant there was nothing that savored of 
intolerance. 

It is quite true that this region is " not phy- 
sically the best part of the State." Indeed, 
there is not much of Connecticut that is physi- 
cally good, if by that term is understood 
adaptation to agriculture, especially agriculture 
which comes into competition with that of the 
great West. Tobacco and onion culture in the 
river bottoms is about all that yields a profit. 

It is not easy to understand by what process 
the farmers of these inland districts manage 
not only to support life, but to clothe them- 
selves and their families with decency, to pay 
their taxes, and to maintain their churches. 
Old men tell sad stories of decadence since the 
railroads destroyed their industry of supplying 
the city markets. Farms, they say, are not 
worth one-half of what was their value fifty 
years ago. What a commentary is this on the 
claim of the protectionists, that manufactories 
encourage the farming in their neighborhood ! 
Certainly the manufacturing interest is centred 
3 



34 WINTER SKETCHES. 

in New England, and all throughout New Eng- 
land the value of farms is decreasing, so that 
it is only by hard work and strict economy 
that the farmer is enabled to pay the expenses 
that this accursed tariff which he is told is 
kept up for his benefit, entails upon him. 

As the people of Berlin, a little town a few 
miles south of Hartford, have found that there 
is no money to be made out of land, they 
have devoted their attention to the chicken 
industry. 

If Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes had been my 
companion, he would have found a great deal 
to interest him here. All the barnyards, fields, 
and roads were overrun with birds, by no means 
of a feather, but representatives of every possi- 
ble variety of the domestic fowl. The magnifi- 
cent Shanghai stalked by the side of the little 
Bantam, and the other breeds intermingled. 
The Plymouth Rock seemed to be the finest 
specimen among them all. One old farmer, 
who looked as if he had really landed on Ply- 
mouth Rock, told me that on Plymouth Rocks 
he depended entirely for a living. Although 
the flocks freely congregate, their owners 
manage to keep the breeds separate. I rode 
out of the village at sunset, just as the various 



STORM-BOUND. 35 

families, being driven in by the children, were 
going to roost, and when their cackling died 
away upon my ear I was again left to the 
solitude of the old turnpike and to darkness, 
until the lights of " Har'ford town " shone out 
before me. 

Fanny and I were detained two whole days 
in Hartford by a storm of wind and rain. The 
continued patter on the roof of the stable I 
doubt not was as pleasing to the mare as the 
lugubrious prospect from the hotel windows 
was depressing for me. Still, when I called to 
mind the graphic description given by Irving 
of his rainy Sunday at a country inn, a true 
philosophy led me to make a comparison in 
my own favor. 

At any rate, I could look out upon a city 
street instead of a stable yard, and in place of 
the melancholy cock standing with drooping 
feathers on the dunghill, there were people to 
be seen battling the storm, often with reversed 
umbrellas, and sometimes swept by the furious 
gusts around the corner and dumped into the 
gutters. That, too, was a greater misery than 
my own, and I confess that the old proverb 
afforded me no little satisfaction. Besides, 
within doors I had company. Several drum- 



3 6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

mers or " travellers," as they call themselves, 
were also storm-bound. As we were all regis- 
tering our names together, the clerk replied to 
the question of one as to the charges. "Three 
dollars and fifty cents per day is the rate, but 
it is two dollars and fifty cents for travellers. 
You are a traveller, aren't you ? " " Yes, sir," 
he replied. When the same question was pro- 
posed to me, my conscience did not forbid 
me to answer in the affirmative. So I was 
adopted into the fraternity and thereby learned 
many of the tricks of the trade. I played 
euchre with my fellow "travellers" to while 
away the tedious hours. My partner travelled 
for a crockery house, and of our opponents one 
travelled for a California wine house, and the 
other for a patent medicine firm. Others in 
the room travelled for dry-goods, grocery, 
saddlery, hardware, and all sorts of houses, 
one of them for a peanut firm, carrying with 
him a large bag of samples, the commodities of 
the others being packed in enormous trunks. 
My modest roll of baggage astonished them, 
and when they asked what my business was, I 
told them it was the horse business, and that I 
could not very well bring my sample into the 
house. 



HE VOL UTION IN TRADE. $7 

My association with these peripatetic agents 
taught me that a greater revolution in trade 
than I had supposed possible had taken place 
since the days of old. Readers of my own 
age, and even those many years younger, will 
remember the Exchanges in our cities where 
merchants congregated for the transaction of 
their own business, and how they have long 
ago been abandoned, a swarm of brokers kindly 
acting as intermediaries, while the principals 
sit at ease in their offices and pay them their 
commissions, which they, of course, charge 
back again on those poor devils the consumers, 
who are persons of no account when there is a 
question of tariff or exactions of any kind 
whereby a few men may be benefitted at the 
expense of many. 

But it must be admitted that by this com- 
paratively new system of drumming, the coun- 
try merchant often finds that he can purchase 
his goods at a cheaper rate than when he was 
obliged to make his semi-annual tours to the 
great cities to obtain his supplies. It used to 
be a costly trip for him, especially when r as 
was not unfrequently the case, he fell into the 
hands of the Philistines. One business often 
ruins another; that of the decoy ducks is 



38 WINTER SKETCHES. ■ 

gone ; the city hotels and places of amusement 
have suffered, but, upon the whole, the con- 
sumer in this case has not suffered, and the 
country merchant, although by staying at home 
he loses the opportunity of getting brightened 
by contact with the outside world, escapes 
fleecing and demoralization. 

As this is necessarily a personal narrative, I 
may be excused for bringing into it a personal 
reminiscence to which I was led by the rainy 
days at Hartford. 

Francis Fellows, a venerable gentleman in his 
eighty-third year, resided there, and was still 
actively engaged in the practice of law. In 
1829 and 1830 he was one of the principals of 
a school with a title sonorous, but not more so 
than it deserved, of " The Mount Pleasant 
Classical Institution," at Amherst. Three 
other teachers of a still more advanced age 
still live, and all, like Mr. Fellows, are in 
good physical and mental condition. This is a 
proof that the large number of boys under 
their charge treated them kindly, and to-day 
those of us who survive hold them i-n the 
highest respect and affection. 

I could not lose the opportunity of calling 
on my good old friend, and, although I cannot 



MOUNT PLEASANT BOYS. 39 

compare myself in any other respect to the 
great apostle, I felt that, like him, I was " sit- 
ting at the feet of Gamaliel." He seemed 
to remember the names of all his old pupils 
and our various characteristics. It was grat- 
ifying, because I knew he was sincere, to 
hear him say that, although he was sometimes 
obliged to punish us, not one of us ever gave 
him real pain by our demeanor toward him. 
"You were a pretty good boy, John, though 
not one of the best," he said ; "you liked play 
better than study." "You are right, sir," I 
replied, " and it is as true now as it was then." 
Enumerating several more, he came to 
Beecher. 

" Beecher," he said, " did not study more 
than you did, but he was a boy that didn't 
need to study. He had it all in him ready to 
break out. The only thing to which he gave 
any attention was elocution. He learned his 
gestures at Mount Pleasant, and since that 
time he has acquired matter to fit them. Yes, 
he was at the head of his class in elocution, 
and I believe he was at the head of his class 
in wrestling and foot-ball. I don't remember 
that he was remarkable for anything else." 

And so the old teacher and the old pupil sat 



40 WINTER SKETCHES. 

together and called to mind the memories of 
the past and of the school of which I can truly 
say, in the words of Lowell at Harvard: 
" Dear old mother, you were constantly forced 
to remind us that you could not afford to give 
us this and that which some other boys had, 
but your discipline and diet were wholesome, 
and you sent us forth into the world with the 
sound constitutions and healthy appetites that 
are bred of simple fare." 

On the next morning the southerly gale had 
blown itself out and a cold north-west wind 
was sending the scud flying through the sky. 
Fanny, after her rest of two days, trotted 
briskly out of the stable yard down through 
the streets of " Har'ford town," over the Con- 
necticut River bridge, and on to the frozen 
ruts of the country road tov/ard Vernon, the 
first town of importance on another turnpike, 
the old "Boston and Hartford," a straight, 
undeviating line that stretched originally for a 
hundred miles from the eastern bank of the 
Connecticut to the seaboard, and„can even yet 
be traced until it is lost among the suburbs of 
the metropolis. Before noon we had ascended 
its highest point of elevation, 1500 feet above 
the sea level, commanding a view of East and 



THE OLD FRENCHMAN. 4 1 

West rocks near New Haven in the south-west, 
of Holyoke range on the north, of the winding 
river and of Nipsig Lake, which lay almost 
directly beneath. For a long distance habita- 
tions were scattered and far between. 

Somewhat further on I came to a house 
lonely, unpainted, and yet somehow, I could 
not tell in what respect, different from any 
farm-houses I had yet seen, except that 
there were certain indications of refinement 
about it, evident, but not easily described. 
At the little wicker gate before it stood an old 
man, of whom I inquired as to the distance of 
the nearest town. He bowed politely and 
replied with an accent which told me that he 
was French. He was overjoyed when I ad- 
dressed him in his native tongue. 

"Ah, monsieur/' he said, " this is the first 
time out of my own family that I have heard 
my own language for the forty-five years that 
I have lived in this lonely place. Paris, did 
you say? It is different from this, is it not?" 

"Yes, indeed," I replied ; " I was there only 
a few months ago, and I wish you could be 
there to see the changes in the half-century of 
your expatriation.'* And then I poured into 
his greedy ears the story of the gay boulevards, 



42 WINTER SKETCHES. 

the charming Champs Elysees, the Bois de 
Boulogne, the little steamboats on the Seine, 
the theatres, and all that makes the bright 
capital of the world so attractive. The tears 
coursed down his cheeks as he sighed and 
said : "So you have seen all that, but tell me, 
did you see his tomb ? I would like to see 
the tomb of Napoleon more than everything 
else, and then I would come back to this 
wilderness to die." 

"It is possible," I said, "that when a child 
you may have seen the Emperor." 

1 'As a child!" he exclaimed. "Look at 
me ; how old do you think I am ? " 

" Perhaps a little older than myself," I re- 
plied. 

" Monsieur, my age is ninety-five years," he 
answered, and then he drew his bent form to 
its full height, straight like the telegraph pole 
at his side ; his eyes flashed with the bright- 
ness of youth, and striking his hand upon his 
heart, he exclaimed in words whose emphasis 
will not bear translation : "Je snis vieux soldat 
de Napoleon ! " 

When I parted from the veteran, he gave 
me a military salute, and on turning in my 
saddle to look at him once more, I saw him 



SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE. 43 

standing on the same spot with his arms folded 
a V Empereur, lost in reveries of the past. 

Since I have made these notes there has 
appeared in the Boston Herald an interesting 
sketch of the career of Frangois Radoux, born 
in Brittany in 1790. He too was a soldier of 
the empire, and was living in Portland, Me. 
Very likely others still survive in France, but it 
is scarcely possible that there are any more of 
them to be found in the United States. I 
wished that these two " venerable men who 
have come down to us from a former genera- 
tion " might be brought together to embrace 
each other and to fight over those old battles 
side by side. Their stories would be worthy 
of a place in the well-worn war columns of the 
Century magazine. 

But time marches rapidly on the downhill 
grade. I have now to make another note. 
Radoux died a few months ago and the vieux 
soldat whom I met upon the road stands guard 
alone on the threshold of the tomb. 

I drew up for the night at the hotel in 
North Ashford. It was the old stage house of 
former days. Evidently no change had come 
over it but the change of decay. It stood 
close upon the road, with a capacious stable 



44 WINTER SKETCHES. 

near by, a porch with side seats at the front 
door, a piazza leading around to the bar-room 
more frequently entered, planks here and there 
missing, the cornices rotted off, blinds for 
some windows, half-blinds for others, no blinds 
at all for the rest, and before it a gallows sign 
with its paint obliterated, so that the form of 
Gen. Washington or of a horse, whichever it 
may be, could not be traced, swinging and 
creaking on its time-worn hinges. The stable, 
of course, had my first consideration. Riding 
over the grass-grown track to the door, and 
kicking against it to call out some sign of life, 
a squeaking voice responded, and presently 
emerged an old man whose clothes and hair 
were covered with hayseed, for he had been 
startled from his sleep. Rubbing his eyes 
with a dazed expression, like that of Rip Van 
Winkle as he wakes upon the stage, he in- 
quired : " Who be you, and what do you 
want ? " 

" I want my horse put up for the night," I 
replied. 

" Where's your cattle ? " 

" Cattle ? " 

" Yes, cattle ; ain't you driving ? " 

"Driving cattle? No, I came from New 



PLENTY OF ROOM. 45 

York, am going to Boston, and intend to stop 
here to-night." 

" You don't tell ! Hain't seen the like for 
more'n forty year. We don't take in a'most 
nobody but drovers now. Well, ride in. I'll 
bed your hoss down and feed him. Want hay 
and oats both, I suppose." 

The big door was swung wide open, and I 
rode into an equine banquet-hall, deserted. 

" Plenty of room here," I remarked, as I 
looked upon the double row of horse stalls, 
many of which were filled with hay, old har- 
nesses, disjointed wagons, farming tools, and 
odds and ends of everything. 

" Plenty of room ; well, yes, I guess there is 
now, but there wasn't plenty too much room 
fifty year ago, mister. Every one of them 
twenty-four hoss stalls had change bosses goin' 
into and comin' out of em. Oh Lord, oh Lord, 
how times has changed ! How when the mail 
stage, — Joe Benham he always drove it — and 
may be two and sometimes three extries, 
rattled up to the door and the passingers tum- 
bled out to the bar-room and got such new rum 
as you can't get noways now, and then 
marched into the eatin' room for their dinners, 
we hosiers used to onharness the teams, lead 



46 WINTER SKETCHES. 

'em smokin' into the stable, harness up the 
fresh 'uns, and have 'em all ready for a new 
start. Joe, he allers 'sisted on my holdin' on 
to the nigh leader till he got up and took the 
lines. I can see him now and hear him holler, 
* Let 'em go, boy ! ' And away they went, 
down the hill, extries after 'em — Joe, he allers 
took the lead cause he card the mail — all in a 
cloud of dust. Ah, them was the times — 
times as was times. Damn the railroads! I 
say. Well, you better go into the house, and 
Miss Dexter'll git you some supper. Supper's 
a'most ready, and I'll be in as soon as I've 
bedded down your hoss." 

A cheery light was gleaming from the 
kitchen and bar-room windows as I entered the 
door of the latter apartment, on which the 
black-painted letters indicating its specialty, 
were still distinctly legible. I was cordially 
welcomed, although the same surprise was 
manifested that I was not in charge of a drove 
of cattle on my way to Brighton. ^ " Has boy 
Andrew taken care of your horse ? " asked the 
landlord. 

" I turned her over to an old man in the 
barn," I answered. 

" Oh, well," he said, " that's all right ; that 



"BANQUET HALL DESERTED." 47 

was boy Andrew. He was a boy in the old 
stage time when my father kept the house, and 
he has been boy ever since, and always will be. 
Supper will be ready soon. I'm right glad to 
see you. You're welcome to the best we've 
got if you'll set down with the family. We 
don't use the big room any more." And then 
to show it, he opened a door on which " Din- 
ing-room " in faded characters often scrubbed 
over, was still plain enough. That banquet 
hall too, was long since deserted and used now 
but occasionally for a country ball to which 
sleighing parties sometimes come from the 
neighboring villages and farm-houses. The 
long table and the chairs had disappeared and 
all the indications of former occupancy were 
the worn floors, with here and there the pine 
knots which refused to wear down. 

As I paced up and down the cheerless apart- 
ment, a sadness again came upon me such as 
all men must feel in the reflection that sentient 
beings like ourselves with throbbing pulses, 
animal spirits, and thinking brains, once living 
on God's beautiful earth were now mouldering: 
beneath its ground, and that we who occupy 
their places must soon follow them, to be fol- 
lowed turn after turn, in the ceaseless round of 



48 WINTER SKETCHES. 

existence and death. God only knows why 
He made us to live and to die. 

Then the great bell which had summoned 
those now departed guests to their meals, 
called our little company to supper in a small 
room adjoining the kitchen. " All we have," 
said the landlady in excuse, " is tea, bread and 
butter, milk, tripe, and sausages ; we are ten 
miles from the railroad and from any town, and 
the butcher comes only once a week, when he 
brings the newspaper." 

She needed not to make any apology. In 
company with the family, including boy An- 
drew, who entertained me with more reminis- 
cences, I made a hearty meal. Soon afterward 
the usual tavern loungers made their appear- 
ance. The landlord was in a jovial and gener- 
ous mood. 

" Gentlemen," said he, " we've got a visitor 
to-night, and I am going to treat. Liquor 
shan't cost any of you a cent. Call for gin or 
cider as much as you want. The whiskey is 
all out." 

The invitation was accepted with alacrity. 
" Fetch on your gin," was the general demand. 
Afterward we had cider, then gin again, and so 
the gin and cider alternated, and if they were 



A FESTIVE EVENING. 



49 



not actually mixed in the glasses, it amounted 
to very much the same thing. I could fill these 
pages with the stories that were told in the in- 
tervals of the game of " high low Jack," which 
we played with a pack of well-worn cards, 
that had done duty, perhaps, ever since the 
old stage times. But owing to the circum- 
stances, the recollection of these stories is some- 
what confusing. It was not exactly one of the 
noctes ambrosiaruz of Christopher North, but 
the enjoyment on an inferior plane was like 
unto theirs. 

The clock, which had been set by my watch — • 
for, unknown to all our friends, to whom it did 
not matter, it had been nearly an hour out of 
the way — at length admonished us that the 
festivities should come to an end. The neigh- 
bors bade me a cordial good-by and filed out 
into the cold air on their homeward tramp, 
and the landlord, with a tallow dip in hand, 
conducted me to my room. Again we 
walked through the dreary dining-hall, and 
then through a long entry-way, whence oppo- 
site the front door a wide staircase with 
carved balustrades ascended. 

Arriving at the top, he opened the door of a 
large corner room of four small-paned windows 
4 



50 WINTER SKETCHES. 

with pendent blue-paper curtains partly rolled 
and held by white strings. He said "good- 
night," and then I looked around at the thread- 
bare carpet, the bureau with here and there a 
knob, the wooden chairs, and the pine table 
surmounted by basin and pitcher. But what 
especially attracted my attention was the enor- 
mous four-post bedstead with fluted columns 
rising nearly to the ceiling, the patchwork quilt, 
and the valance which hung half way to the 
floor. I did not need to open a window for 
air. Every sash was loose. The room was 
sufficiently ventilated, and it was cold but not 
damp, although a fire had not probably been 
lighted there for years and years. So I climbed 
up to the elevated sleeping plane, and falling 
into a deep valley with mountains of feathers on 
either side, was soon asleep, notwithstanding 
that north-west gale which beat its night-long 
tattoo on the rattling window sashes. 

After an early breakfast I bade adieu to my 
liberal host. Alas for him, he lives ten miles 
from a railroad, and knows little of the ways 
of the world and of its impositions on the 
guileless traveller. I had had two " square 
meals," an unlimited supply of gin and cider, 
and a bed ; Fanny had had good care, a peck 



ARRIVAL A T BOSTON. 5 I 

of oats, and all the hay she could eat, and our 
bill was one dollar. When I put a quarter 
into the hands of the boy Andrew, he looked 
at it intently before he closed his fingers upon 
it, and remarked : " Wall, you must have plenty 
o' money. In the old stage times passengers 
never gin me more'n ninepence, not many of 
'em more'n fopence happ'ny, and most of 'em 
nothin'." 

I still followed the turnpike to Hopkinton, 
where we passed the last night before reaching 
our destination, and arrived in Boston on the 
next day, losing all traces of the ancient turn- 
pike on reaching Ashland, about fifteen miles 
from the city. 

We were six days upon the road exclusive 
of the involuntary detention of two days at 
Hartford. By our route, which was not so 
direct as it might have been had I struck across 
from New Haven, we covered the distance of 
211 miles, an average of about thirty-five miles 
per day, the longest having 1 been thirty-nine 
miles, and the shortest, which was the last, 
twenty-eight. 

Appetite was not wanting for my Thanks- 
giving dinner. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Old Church and the Old Home. — The 
Pretty Neponset. — Changes in a Boston 
Suburb. — A Story of Webster. — Notes by 
the Way. — The Pilgrims and Massasoit. 

It is not so easy to get out of Boston as it 
was before Boston stretched itself over the 
surrounding country, leaving the little penin- 
sula on which it was founded, to serve mainly 
for business purposes, while residences have 
been built up on the newly acquired territory. 
Not content with the absorption of Roxbury 
and Dorchester, the city has brought the more 
distant country into town by cutting down its 
hills and transporting them into the. Back Bay, 
which has now become the home of fashion 
and of aesthetic religion. 

Riding out over Washington Street, I call 
to mind the time when it was " the Neck," I 
remember when Lafayette entered the city 

53 



THE FOREIGN TIDE. 53 

upon it in 1824, and how the high water that 
day washed upon both sides of the street. 
Since then Boston has outgrown herself, and 
has overflowed, because of the foreign tide 
that has poured in upon her. One can 
scarcely take up a Boston newspaper without 
reading columns of reminiscences, in which 
there is always a touch of sadness, a mourning 
for departed days. Wealth and splendor, 
population and even culture, afford no conso- 
lation to these desponding antiquarians. The 
Boston of their fathers, the American Boston, 
has gone, and a new Boston, a Boston of 
foreigners, has taken its place. When Dor- 
chester twenty years ago was annexed, it 
seemed very hard for the people of that 
ancient borough to give up its name. They 
thought that Boston should have been an- 
nexed to Dorchester, but they were obliged to 
succumb to numbers, and the alien tide has 
swept over them too, and has nearly washed 
out their Puritan Sabbath, to which they held 
on longer with traditional reverence than 
almost any other town in Massachusetts. 

I ride slowly and reverently by the old 
meeting-house and by the old homestead 
where I was born. The latter is sacred to my 



54 WINTER SKETCHES. 

own heart, but the former has a history for the 
public. Within its walls was blown the first 
bugle note of actual war between orthodoxy 
and Unitarianism, in 1811. There was open 
mutiny, and an attempt to eject by force from 
his pulpit the minister who represented the 
Trinitarian creed. Then came a division, but 
the bitter animosity engendered by this re- 
ligious strife lasted throughout our childhood 
and youth, enforcing a strict taboo upon the 
social intercourse of families, throwing a wet 
blanket over our juvenile spirits, and encour- 
aging no little spiritual pride among us ortho- 
dox children, who pitied the Unitarian boys 
and girls because they were sure to be damned, 
while we could not but envy them for their 
better opportunities of enjoying the present 
life. 

What a commentary it all was upon faith 
and works ! Wilcox kept the tavern opposite, 
where on Sundays, before and after meeting, 
he dispensed rum to his fellow church mem- 
bers. He was a good man because he believed 
in the doctrines of the Assembly's Catechism. 
If he had denied them, and, conscientiously 
closing his bar-room on Sundays, had still led 
his otherwise exemplary life, he would have 



THE STO VE ENGA GEMENT. 5 5 

been condemned to eternal punishment. But 
he died at peace with his Maker and himself. 
My father, his pastor, wrote the lines which 
may be seen upon his gravestone : 

With faith and works his life did well accord, 
He served the public while he served the Lord. 

Not many years after the declaration of doc- 
trinal war, there arose in that old meeting- 
house another controversy of startling propor- 
tions, which impressed itself upon my early 
childhood. This was the hard-fought stove 
engagement. The self-denial exercised sixty 
or seventy years ago for no other purpose 
than that of escaping future punishment, in 
going to meeting through a winter's storm, to 
sit upon hard seats, and to kick our feet upon 
an uncarpeted floor, the mercury sometimes 
below zero, through the delivery of much 
longer sermons than are inflicted upon us now, 
cannot be appreciated by those who consider 
it a pleasure rather than a duty to attend 
churches where they may recline on soft up- 
holstery in a balmy furnace heat, listening to 
discourses of moderate length and of greater 
scope and liberality. 

Then, families were seen wending their way 



56 WINTER SKETCHES. 

to their seats, some of the children carrying in 
their hands little tin foot-stoves set in slatted 
frames, so that mamma or grandmamma at 
least might have some comfort for her toes, 
while steaming breaths ascended from the 
pews, and the pulpit seemed to be occupied by 
a high-pressure engine. 

Such was the condition of things in the year 
1820 or thereabouts, when some audacious in- 
novators proposed the introduction of stoves 
with long ranges of pipe for heating the house. 
The war was fiercely waged, but fortunately it 
did not result in another secession. At last 
the stove party was victorious. Old " Uncle 
Ned Foster " was foremost in the opposition. 
He threatened to " sign off," but finally he 
concluded to remain loyal and sit it out. So 
on the first Sunday after the stoves had been 
introduced, the old gentleman occupied his 
pew as usual, the stove-pipe being directly over 
him. There he sat with no very saint-like ex- 
pression throughout the sermon, a red ban- 
danna handkerchief spread over his head, and 
his face corresponding to it in color. A gen- 
eral smile circulated through the house, the 
minister himself catching the infection, for 
almost everybody excepting Uncle Ned was 



THE STOLEN RIDE. $7 

aware that, the day being rather warm, no 
fires had been lighted. 

I have gone back many, many years. There 
has not been so much change during all this 
time in the old elms, the stone walls, and even 
in the houses, but generations have gone and 
come and gone again in these threescore years 
and ten. We remember the places, but " the 
places that once knew them shall know them 
no more." 

Just beyond the old church is a house which 
has undergone various transformations and is 
now a hotel. It was once occupied by Daniel 
Webster. It brings to mind the first ride on 
horseback that I can remember. Like all 
stolea fruit it was sweet, and like stolen fruit it 
left a bitter taste. Fletcher Webster and I, 
little fellows of about seven years old, used to 
go to school to Master Pierce on Milton Hill. 
As our house was on his way, Fletcher was ac- 
customed to call for me in the morning, and 
we returned together in the afternoon, being 
boarded out for dinner in the neighborhood of 
the school-house at the rate of twelve and one- 
half cents each for our meals. Saturday after- 
noon of course " school did not keep." 

One Saturday morning Fletcher came riding 



58 WINTER SKETCHES. 

up to our door bareback on his father's beauti- 
ful black mare. " Jump up behind, Johnny," 
he cried ; " father's gone to Boston, school will 
be out, and we'll get back before he gets 
home ! " So Fletcher and I rode off down 
through the village, across the bridge, and up 
the hill for the rest of a mile to the school. I 
am not sure whether the mare ran away with 
us or not. We did not care, and we were very 
happy. We tied Bessie to a tree in a clump 
behind the school-house and went in to apply 
ourselves diligently to our lessons. An hour 
afterward, Master Pierce had a class up for 
recitation. It was a warm day. The windows 
and doors were open. Suddenly Mr. Webster 
stalked into the little school-room. I am 
pretty sure that I shall not live to the age of 
Methuselah, but if I do I shall not forget that 
scene. The class stopped their recitation. 
Master Pierce stood still and the ruler dropped 
from his hand making the only noise that 
broke the dead stillness. Mr. Webster walked 
up to his son and said in a deep tone, not so 
very loud, but which seemed to me like a clap 
of thunder, " Where's the mare ! " and then he 
lifted Fletcher from his seat by the ear. He 
told me afterward that his father said nothing 



THE OLD ROAD. 



59 



more at the time or when he came home. He 
merely went with him to the tree where the 
mare was tied, unhitched her, tied her behind 
his chaise, and drove off. 

Leisurely and sadly two little boys walked 
home from school, and ever afterwards, going 
and coming, they walked. 

Fanny and I again went over the road that 
the two school-boys had so often travelled 
sixty-six years ago, down through the village, 
across the bridge, and up the hill. In all this 
time there has scarcely been a change. Boston 
has spread itself everywhere but here. There 
by the roadside is the cemetery, the " burying- 
ground, " as it is still called. There lie the 
early settlers, and should they rise from their 
graves to-day, they would recognize the sur- 
roundings. There are few new houses in 
Milton Lower Mills village ; the amber-colored 
water pours over the dam with the same cease- 
less music to meet the salt tide of the Nepon- 
set that flows to its base ; the same odor of 
fresh water brought from its course above, and 
of the chocolate ground at the mills, pervades 
the air, for memory treasures the fond associa- 
tions of all our senses. What country child 
grown to old age does not remember the sweet 



60 WINTER SKETCHES. 

briar, the syringa, or the tansy by the wayside 
of his home ? 

Everything of sixty-six years ago was still 
where it was till we came to the site of the 
little school-house, but the school-house is not. 
More than half a century has passed since 
Master Pierce was gathered to his fathers. 
Daniel Webster's name alone is immortal. 
His son, my little schoolmate, died upon the 
battle-field, a sacrifice to the country that was 
so ungrateful to his illustrious sire, while those 
of us who survive them may thank God for 
the memories of the life that has passed, for 
the good in the life that now is, and for the 
hope of the life to come. 

It is all like the little river we have just 
crossed, which has meandered for miles 
through rich meadows, bringing away the col- 
ors of their grasses and their flowers bright- 
ened by the sunlight falling upon the quiet 
basin in which for a time it rests until it leaps 
over the falls and loses itself, as all-rivers are 
lost at last, in the embraces of the boundless 
sea. But is the pretty stream lost merely be- 
cause it has poured itself into the ocean? 
Does it not yet live in my memory and in 
thousands of other memories besides? It is 



THE BLUE HILLS. 6 1 

one of those things of beauty that are joys for- 
ever. Exhaled to the skies, it may float " a 
sun-bright glory there," and wafted to an- 
other continent, may dance down from the 
summits of the Alps and water the valleys of 
Switzerland. No, there is nothing lost. 
When we ourselves, less useful in the world 
than its rivers, shall drift away into the ocean 
of eternity, we, like them, may be exhaled to 
serve a better purpose in some other sphere 
of the universe. 

Half mounting Milton Hill, we turn to the 
right, entering upon the old Taunton turn- 
pike, and keeping a southerly course for a few 
miles, gain the highest point, which is in the 
notch of the Blue Hills. Approaching it, and 
afterwards descending the southern slope as 
the mist hangs over the neighboring hills, it 
required little effort of the imagination to 
transport one's self to the White Mountains 
or the Sierras, so charmingly delusive was the 
scenery as it was thrown out of proportion by 
the hazy atmosphere. Thus we may travel 
away many miles at a very cheap rate, and 
when the sun breaks out, we may come as 
easily home. 

For long reaches this old turnpike is little 



02 WINTER SKETCHES. 

travelled. In some places the trees have 
sought companionship in their loneliness, lean- 
ing over to each other and intertwining their 
branches. Then again are long, barren 
stretches, small villages with meeting-houses 
that were painted once, blacksmiths' shops 
where anvils ring no longer, " English and 
West India Goods Stores " which have not 
many English or West India goods to sell, be- 
cause population is wanting, for farms are now 
valueless. Occasionally as we mount a hill we 
get a view of towns a few miles upon the left, 
the Randolphs and the Bridgewaters, with 
their shiny-spired churches and clustered 
white houses and shops, manufacturing towns, 
prosperous at the expense of other people, and 
in the distance we hear the triumphant shout 
of the iron horse and the clatter of his hoofs. 

Taunton, or Tar'n, as it is called by the na- 
tives, is one of these thriving factory towns ; 
and, moreover, it is an exceedingly pretty town, 
but its chief attractions for us were a good 
stable and a well-kept hotel, where it was 
convenient to pass the night, as we had accom- 
plished somewhat more than half the distance 
that separates Fall River from Boston. 

We jogged along leisurely on the next day, 



A ROUGH COUNTRY. 6$ 

for we had not much more than twenty miles 
to go over, and the snow which had fallen in 
the night, and was still falling, rendered Fanny 
very uncomfortable on her feet. 

There is little of interest upon the road, bleak 
as it is in winter and scarcely less so in summer. 
What brought our fathers to these inhospitable 
shores is a question often asked, and generally 
answered by attributing their coming to a 
special dispensation of Providence. If there 
ever was such a thing as a special Providence, 
it manifested itself in the settlement of the colo- 
nies of Plymouth and Narragansett Bay. Al- 
though this part of the country was settled later 
than the neighborhood about Boston, it now 
has the appearance of a greater age. It was a 
rough country to live in, and a rough country 
to die in, as stony fields and grave-stones to 
this day attest. To look at this ground now, 
whose great crop is of rock — grass and pasture 
land being exceptions to the general features 
of the landscape — we can imagine its utter 
desolation before any clearings were made. 
Who of us would have taken such a wilderness 
in this cruel climate as a gift, and would have 
risked his life in fighting savages for the main- 
tenance of such a possession ? 



64 WINTER SKETCHES. 

The truth is that the Pilgrims came here 
by accident, but when once they had settled 
down, they determined to make the best of it. 

In Young's " History of the Pilgrims," if I 
remember aright the authority, we are told 
that the company of the Mayflower were in the 
habit of splitting their wood upon the quarter- 
deck, and when the axe was not in use, they 
laid it in the binnacle alongside of the compass, 
which was so affected by the iron, that the ship 
instead of bringing up at the Capes of the 
Delaware or the Chesapeake, made the land at 
Cape Cod. The passengers could not well get 
away, and so, like the fox who had lost his tail, 
they made a virtue of necessity, persuading 
themselves and others whom they induced to 
come after them, that this was indeed a goodly 
land. 

Robert Cushman, who was a sort of Com- 
missioner of Emigration, issued an address to 
the English Puritans in 162 1, in which he set 
forth the attractions of this land flawing with 
milk and honey, with all the persuasiveness of 
a railroad pamphleteer of the present day. He 
was also a prototype of Mr. Henry George in 
his theory of agrarianism. He had no more 
regard for the rights of the Indians than Mr. 



PURITAN AGRARIANISM. 65 

George entertains for those of the proprietors 
of real estate. 

He says: ''Their land is spacious and void, 
and there are few who do but run over the 
grass as do also the foxes and wild beasts. 
They are not industrious, neither have art, 
science, skill, or faculty to use either the land 
or the commodities of it ; but all spoils, rots, 
and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, 
ordering, etc ? As the ancient patriarchs there- 
fore removed from straiter places into more 
roomy, where the land lay idle and waste, and 
have used it though there dwelt inhabitants by 
them (as Gen. xiii.,6, 11, 12 and xxxiv. 21, and 
xli., 20), so it is lawful now to take a land which 
none useth, and make use of it." 

Thus the Puritans -quoted Scripture, and 
their descendants act upon the same lack of 
principle without their canting hypocrisy when 
they drive the Indians from the reservations 
they have conceded to them. But our ances- 
tors were filibusters in some respects of a more 
honest type than those of the present day. 
They merely wanted a little corner of the 
"spacious and void land " for themselves, and 
were willing to leave the natives in posses- 
sion of all the rest. They endeavored to 



66 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Christianize them. Eliot translated the Bible 
into their language. It was a labor of years, 
and when it was completed, the tribes for 
whom it was intended had died out, but still 
the credit for it is due to that devoted mis- 
sionary. 

The Puritans were always ready to make 
treaties and compromises before they resorted 
to war and extermination. They behaved 
much better in this respect than the Israelites, 
by whose example they justified themselves, 
and than their own descendants, who make 
treaties but do not respect them. 

As we travel over this wide and stone-walled 
road along the banks of the river, beholding 
the smoke of factories and hearing the noise of 
machinery and railroad-engines, let us close 
our eyes and ears to the surroundings, and go 
back in our thought to the time when all this 
was a wilderness, and to the journey made by 
Hopkins and Winslow a few months after the 
colonists landed at Plymouth. It is graphi- 
cally related by Winslow himself, and the 
whole story may be found in the interesting 
work of Dr. Young, to which reference has al- 
ready been made. Over the ground where I 
was riding, these two bold men, escorted by 



MASSASOITS GRA TITUDE. 6j 

a savage, went to visit Massasoit, who dwelt 
upon yonder hill called Mount Hope. 

This is the way the chief entertained them : 
" Victuals he offered none, for indeed he had 
not any. He laid us in the bed with himself 
and his wife, they at one end and we at the 
other ; it being only planks laid a foot from the 
ground and a thin mat upon them. Two more 
of his men for want of room pressed by 
and upon us, so that we were more weary of 
our lodging than of our journey." 

Subsequently, Winslow gives a graceful nar- 
ration of their journey to Mt. Hope, repeated 
three years later. Their object in visiting the 
sachem again, was to comfort and relieve him 
in his illness. Their kindness was amply re- 
warded, for whereas Massasoit was perhaps 
likely to be influenced against the English by 
other chiefs and by their jealous neighbors the 
Dutch, the disinterested benevolence added 
to the medical skill of Winslow and his com- 
panions, so touched his heart that no repre- 
sentations against the colonists could after- 
wards have the least effect upon this noble and 
grateful soul. 

Policy would have dictated the easy exter- 
mination of the whites, but gratitude was a 



6S 



WINTER SKETCHES. 



more powerful motive with him than the self- 
protection which might properly have been 
called patriotism. In whatever light the char- 
acter and conduct of Massasoit may be viewed, 
there is little doubt that his recovery from 
illness through the instrumentality of Winslow 
contributed largely to the firm establishment 
of the Puritans and to the ruin of the Indian 
tribes. When Massasoit died, and Philip, a 
wiser if not a better man, endeavored to destroy 
the colonists in 1675, he found that it was too 
late. The cruel Philip was more patriotic than 
the gentle Massasoit. 

Fanny and I were more concerned with the 
present than with all this that happened two 
centuries and a half ago. Evening was drawing 
on and the snow was beginning to fall thick 
and fast. Go on, Fanny, carry me a little 
further, and then the good steamer Bristol shall 
carry us both to New York. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Railway Car, the Sleigh, and the Saddle- 
horse:— Preparations for the Ride. — New 
York Surroundings. — Reminiscence of Irv- 
ing- — English and American Country 
Homes. 

" O Winter, ruler of the inverted year ; 
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, 
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips ; thy cheek, 
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds, 
A leafless branch thy sceptre— and thy throne, 
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 
But urged by storms along its slippery way, 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, 
And dreaded as thou art." 

It was a cold January day when I started 
from the stable in Fifty-ninth Street for a 
visit to the country. Railway travelling at 
this season of the year is especially dangerous. 
Axles are more .liable to break. Three fearful 
accidents from this cause had lately been 
recorded. For years after the introduction of 

69 



7<3 WINTER SKETCHES. 

railroads in England, orders were given to 
reduce the speed on frosty days, but now, 
although the risk is the same, speed is con- 
sidered to be of more importance than human 
life. So we rattle on, satisfying ourselves 
from statistics that the average of death from 
such causes is small, and calculating with rea- 
sonable probability that we shall not be 
counted among the dead. The same theory 
prevails as to the warming and lighting of 
cars. The great mortality from train wrecks 
comes from the overturning of stoves and the 
bursting of kerosene-oil lamps. But who con- 
siders that? We estimate the averages, and 
feel reasonably sure that we shall not be 
among the victims. 

Aside from the danger from a stove, the 
stove is a villanous thing anywhere, notably 
in a railroad car. It burns up the oxygen of 
the air, and is accountable for much of the 
pneumonia which at the present day hurries 
people out of life. As an abomination it is 
second only to steam-pipes. 

Englishmen know some things better than 
we do. We can teach them something about 
baked beans, the frying-pan, a beneficent pro- 
tective tariff, and more, but in sanitary science 



THE MURDEROUS KEROSENE LAMP. jl 

they are our superiors. You will never find a 
stove in an English railway carriage. Their 
idea is that it is quite sufficient to keep the 
feet warm and not to exhaust the lungs or 
stupefy the brain. Passengers are provided 
with cylinders of hot water, renewed as oc- 
casion requires, on which to place their 
feet ; they are therefore safe from stove acci- 
dents. In the early railroad days of this coun- 
try the cars were lighted by enormous candles, 
giving all the illumination that was necessary 
for ordinary purposes. If the car was over- 
turned, the candles extinguished themselves 
without causing any damage. But the insati- 
able greed for reading, to which the newsboys 
so much contribute, has supplanted the inno- 
cent candle with the murderous kerosene 
lamp, which in a collision scatters destruction 
far and wide. The public must be accommo- 
dated at the risk of their eyes at all times, of 
their lives sometimes ; and when disasters 
come, the railroad company is blamed, justly 
in a degree, but unjustly inasmuch as the very 
thing complained of is demanded by this inex- 
orable public. 

All this is not irrelevant. If it shall be pro- 
ductive of good to call attention to it, it will 



72 WINTER SKETCHES. 

be better than anything else I may have to 
say. Besides, I am making my point. In win- 
ter it is better to travel by some other means 
than the railway. Sleigh-riding comes next. 
That is not immediately dangerous, although 
severe colds, conducive to fatal results, may 
be contracted. I will admit that there is a cer- 
tain degree of pleasure in it. At least, it was 
pleasurable in former days. One of its attrac- 
tions for me has been lost since we hear no 
more the merry jingling of those great round 
bells that were banded over the horse's back. 
It is not now the fashion to carry them, and if 
anything supplies their place, it is a tinkling 
plaything, heard by the foot passenger just as 
he is about to be run over. 

There are still some of those old Dutch and 
New England sleighs existing only as curios- 
ities. They were made for comfort rather 
than for speed. The fancy sleighs of to-day 
have scarcely more back support than summer 
trotting wagons. They are provocative of 
rheumatism and kidney complaints. The seat 
has hardly room for more than one person, 
and if two occupy it, it is greatly to their dis- 
comfort. This is not sleigh-riding as we used 
to understand it. " Boxes " were they, those 



HEALTHFUL LOCOMOTION. 73 

old sleighs ? Perhaps so, but very comforta- 
ble boxes, high-backed, protecting the shoul- 
ders and the neck, high sided, bottoms deeply 
covered with straw ; they were sleighs we got 
into, not upon ; there was abundance of room 
for a companion, and when we were ensconced 
in that box and so covered over with buffalo 
skins that nobody could see exactly what we 
were doing, and a merry song chimed in with 
the music of those big bells, that was sleigh- 
riding — with warm hearts instead of cold backs 
and freezing toes. 

There are two modes of healthful locomo- 
tion left to us, pedestrianism and horseback 
exercise. I make no account of the unnatural 
bicycle, which doctors tell us is productive of 
serious disorders when used to excess. Walk- 
ing is a solitary entertainment. It has no vari- 
ety in its measured step, although it is valu- 
able for its economy when time is not consid- 
ered. But there is the companionship of the 
horse, and the change of gait bringing many 
muscles into play, which give a peculiar zest to 
riding. In summer the rapid motion prevents 
a concentration of the sun's rays, but it is in 
winter that it starts the blood into circulation, 
and if the nose becomes red, the cheeks are 



74 WINTER SKETCHES. 

red also and the glow of health pervades the 
whole body. With proper precautions, the 
rider needs not to suffer from cold even in the 
severest weather. 

The mercury stood fifteen degrees above 
zero when I started from the stable on my 
ride. I cannot call to remembrance the novel, 
but it is one of Scott's, where the hero is about 
to start for the Highlands in company with an 
old farmer, who, before commencing the jour- 
ney, carefully wraps the steel stirrups with 
straw for the purpose of keeping their feet 
warm. I have always remembered the hint, 
and have found the practice to be effectual. 
Avoid at all times, on foot or on horseback, 
especially on horseback, the unhealthful India- 
rubber boot or shoe. They are inventions of 
the undertaker. If you would keep your feet 
warm and dry, put on thick-soled boots of 
thick upper leather too, not by any means 
tight, and wear thin cotton socks with woollen 
socks over them, and when riding iji very cold 
weather, felt overshoes over the boots. These 
are not in general use, and I have had some 
difficulty in obtaining them. In response to 
numerous inquiries, the shoe-dealers told me 
that they had not this article. At last a face- 



PREPARATIONS FOR RIDING. 75 

tious shop-keeper said that he had plenty of 
felt slippers, and that he had one pair made 
for a Chicago girl which were not large 
enough for her, but he thought they might go 
on over my boots. They did. So much for 
stirrups and boots. 

To change to the head. Put your soft felt 
hat in your pocket. Wear a toboggan cap, 
which may be pulled down over your ears, and 
over your nose if need be, while you look 
through the meshes. Wear a cardigan jacket, 
and button your pea-jacket tightly around 
your neck. Carry your stable-blanket in this 
wise, remembering that you are to use a 
McClellan saddle, as I counselled you to do 
not long ago ; double the blanket, and, leaving 
just enough to go under the saddle, allow the 
most of it to fall over the horse's neck till you 
are mounted. Having mounted, pull the re- 
mainder of it over your legs, and start, for 
now you are ready. You may face snow- 
storms and blizzards, and you will actually 
enjoy them as I did. 

I was bound to Irvington, for my first stop- 
ping place, and after riding through the park, 
and bestowing pity upon some friends whom I 
met perched upon their skeleton sleighs, vainly 



j6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

imagining t'hat they were enjoying themselves, 
I struck out upon Jerome Avenue, which 
appeared to be leading in the right direction ; 
but I soon found that I was heading for 
Woodlawn, the city of the dead, for a sarcastic 
milkman informed me that I was going all 
right if I wanted to be buried, but that if I 
wanted to live a little while longer, and to get 
to Irvington before night, it would be better to 
strike across the country and find Broadway. 

I don't think any cockney has an idea of the 
crooked lanes that have been laid out, like the 
streets of Boston by cows, within a few miles 
of New York. I would sooner take my chance 
of getting anywhere on a Western prairie than 
of rinding my way out of town above Harlem 
without assistance. However, Fanny and I, 
by a combination of instinct, moderate intel- 
ligence, and persistent inquiry, at last came in 
sight of the North River, and headed up 
stream. It was Broadway, as it is called until 
it reaches Albany — not the Broadway of salted 
railroad tracks and dirty slush, bordered by 
shops and hotels ; but a Broadway now of 
clean white snow, in summer of macadamized 
road, shaded by oaks, elms, firs, and pines. 
Now, the bare limbs of the great trees form a 



CO UNTR Y HOMES. J J 

network through which we see the Hudson, 
beautiful at all seasons, and the evergreens, 
festooned with their wintry robes glittering in 
the sunlight, are clothed in their gayest at- 
tire. 

From New York to Poughkeepsie, and even 
beyond, there is a constant succession of com- 
fortable, elegant, and sometimes ostentatious 
country houses, owned by New York citizens, 
many of them, chiefly of the latter class, oc- 
cupied merely as summer residences. The 
comfortable and the elegant, which are by no 
means separate or incompatible, mostly pre- 
vail, and the good taste of their owners in- 
clines them to live in them all the year round. 

There are many things that are " English, 
you know," and there is nothing more ridicu- 
lous than American servile imitations of for- 
eign customs when they are not adapted to 
our country or to our circumstances. But 
there is much that we can learn from England, 
and the refusal to avail ourselves of English 
example when it points out an improvement 
in our society or condition is almost as absurd 
as toadyism and preposterous imitations of 
language and dress. The English country 
gentleman has been an " institution," yes, he 



?8 WINTER SKETCHES. 

has been instituted, fixed, established in Brit- 
ain for centuries. The English castle and 
manor-house have been and are still the scenes 
which English novelists most delight to pict- 
ure. Comfort, that charming English word 
for which there is no French equivalent, is 
centered in them. 

Beautiful as they are in summer, with their 
parks and green lawns, it is in the winter that 
they are at their best. It is in the winter that 
people ''run down to the country" for their 
most perfect enjoyment. Christmas was made 
for the country. Those Christmas holidays ! 
That blessed season of family reunions, of 
unbounded hospitality, of universal benev- 
olence commemorating the birth of Christ as 
he would have it observed ! He may have 
been the predicted " man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief," but if I read his history 
aright, he who feasted with Pharisees, publicans, 
and sinners alike, was of a temperament so 
happy and genial that he would look^with more 
favor on gatherings like these than upon the 
life-long fasts and penances of fanatical priests 
and saints. Christmas, merry Christmas ! Yes, 
he intended that it should be merry. He meant 
that man should be happy, not miserable, for 



WASHING TON IR VING. 79 

it was from misery that he came to redeem 
him. 

If English writers have done so much to 
impress us with the joys of their country life, 
the purest writer of the purest prose in Amer- 
ica has surpassed all of them in such descrip- 
tions. Where, then, should he be more appre- 
ciated than by those who dwell about his old 
home ! Truly, the proverb is sometimes at 
fault. This prophet is held in honor in his own 
country. I once visited him at Sunnyside. It 
was Sunnyside. He must have unconsciously 
named it for himself, for he was the sunshine 
of all around him. 

Among all classes along the bank of the 
Hudson he was personally known and loved. 
A few days before we called upon him he had 
been strolling about the country and had inad- 
vertently crossed a farmer's field. The owner, 
supposing him to be a tramp, had ordered him 
off with coarse and insolent words; but having 
discovered his mistake, he came to the cottage 
to offer his apology in most abject terms. " I 
was very sorry," said the courteous old man — 
" not because of what he had said to me in the 
first instance, but for his needless humiliation 
when he came to see me. However, I think 



8o WINTER SKETCHES. 

that in future anybody may walk over his 
grounds without being molested, for he prom- 
ised me that, and so I am more than even with 
him." 

The writings of Irving and his dwelling at 
Sunnyside have built up many Bracebridge 
Halls in his neighborhood. Into one of them 
I was thus pleasantly introduced. Riding up 
the hill leading to Riverdale I was overtaken 
by another horseman. Acquaintance on the 
road is often made by complimentary remarks 
upon the animals we ride. Thus, " That is a 
nice pony of yours," to which the reply is 
returned, " Yes, and I was just noticing the 
pretty head of yours." The ice of convention- 
ality is at once broken and the stream of 
conversation flows on. Men can commit them- 
selves to it without compromising their char- 
acters. It is different with women. They 
institute and undergo a great deal of prelim- 
inary examination. Women have less confi- 
dence in each other than men. They go to 
church more frequently and call themselves 
miserable sinners with more sincerity. But 
they are not such miserable sinners as we are. 
They are vastly better, and yet they are more 
afraid of contamination from each other. Be- 



A WELCOME INVITATION. 8 1 

fore they will make any advances, they take 
long and accurate surveys of physiognomy, 
contour, and dress, listening with all their ears 
for an indication of good or bad breeding in 
the language the object of avoidance or associ- 
tion may use in addressing a third party, and if 
such an one be not present, perhaps to the 
orders given to a waiter at the table. The ice 
to be broken is much thicker than ours, but 
when it once is broken, the stream flows on with 
a rapidity that it is impossible for us to 
match. 

" You will hardly get to Irvington in time for 
lunch," said my young friend. " Here is the 
avenue leading to our house and I am sure that 
my mother and family will be glad to welcome 
you." The invitation was accepted with the 
cordiality with which it was given and thus a 
delightful addition was made to the store of 
my country friends. 

It was through the gate-way of an avenue 
leading to another mansion like unto that 
where I had been so pleasantly entertained, that 
as evening was advancing, I turned my horse, 
arriving under the porte-cochere just as my 
genial host was driving up in his sleigh from 
the station, and as the young people were 
6 



82 WINTER SKETCHES. 

coming in from their healthful exercise of 
coasting. 

It was scarcely the time to draw the curtains 
over the homelike scene of a blazing wood fire 
throwing alternate lights and shadows upon the 
ceiling, and glowing upon the faces of the 
ladies of the household, to whom notice had 
been given by the jingling bells that it was the 
hour for the " five o'clock tea." That, too, is 
" English, you know," and it is one of the 
choice importations from the old country, to 
which not even the most selfish protectionist 
of home customs who has felt its soothing 
influence can object. Let temperance people 
also make a note of it, for it is coming to take 
the place of the appetizing cocktail. The city 
resident cannot fully appreciate it. To give it 
zest it needs the transition from the frosty air 
to the snug comfort of the country home, from 
the out-of-door twilight to the interval within 
doors when there is a suspension between day 
and night, when there is yet light enough to 
see, but not light enough to read. That is it 
exactly ; that is the intervening half-hour 
when business cares fade away and domestic 
joys take their place. 



THE DINNER HOUR. 83 

"Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Shoots up a steaming column, and the cups 
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. " 

I am a cosmopolitan. I can dine anywhere 

even at a railway station. 1 am used to 

being summoned to dinner by the sound of 
bell or gong, to seeing all the supplies, from 
soup to ice-cream, piled upon the table at 
once ; used to everything, for I was once used 
to cutting my share of salt junk from the kid 
with my sheath knife ; but now, although I do 
not think that any one has the right to re- 
proach me with aestheticism, I like to see a 
well-dressed butler— not a flunky, but one 
who is valuable for his usefulness, and not 
disgusting because of his superciliousness — I 
like to see such an one open the door and 
make his bow, to hear him announce that the 
dinner is served. I know that in this Brace- 
bridge Hall there is a meaning in it. 

Excessive is the politeness of the garcon of 
a French table d'hote as he appears with 
napkin over his arm, but we have no assurance 
that the dinner will commend itself to us. I 



84 WINTER SKETCHES. 

once heard the question of diet discussed. 
There were various theories suggested as to 
carbonaceous, and nitrogenous food, the di- 
gestibleness of some things, the indigestible- 
ness of others. But it seemed to me that the 
question was settled by a bright, intelligent, 
healthy woman who observed : " I don't think 
it makes so much difference what or how much 
we eat. It all depends on the company with 
whom we eat it." Certainly in this case that 
chief requisite was at hand, with all the taste- 
ful appointments of the table. 

More I will not say of the charming hospi- 
tality of my friend and of his family, of the 
delightful evening in his library, where I saw 
nothing of the books but their covers, for 
social intercourse was to me more agreeable 
than anything they might contain. Nor will I 
say much of the billiards at which later on I 
gained but an occasional victory, nor of the in- 
ternal night-cap, the dreamless night, the sub- 
stantial breakfast, the kind good-byes, the cor- 
dial invitation to come again, which I never 
decline. I have sought to give a sketch of 
American country houses in the winter. It is a 
family picture which may be reproduced in 
the memory of my readers, and I trust that 



THE DINNER HOUR. 8$ 

its general traits are so familiar to them that 
I shall not have done violence to the modesty 
of my hosts by taking their homes for illus- 
trations. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Hudson in Winter, — Snow Pictures. — 
Castles and Ruins. — The River Towns. — 
Story of Andre'. — Legend of Sleepy 
Hollow. — The Grave of Irving. 

IT was a bright frosty morning when Fanny 
and I left Irvington — upward bound along 
the eastern bank of the Hudson. More snow 
had fallen during the night covering the 
sleigh tracks on the road, and now the fresh 
north-west gale set the storm again in motion 
from the ground, whirling the snow in fan- 
tastic wreaths and shaking it down in huge 
flakes from the overladen firs. It was some- 
what blinding to the eyes and cutting to the 
cheeks, it is true, but one is always-willing to 
pay a fee for a view of a fine picture, and this 
trifling inconvenience was but a small tribute 
to Nature for the exhibition of her wonderful 
panorama of field and woodland, hills and dis- 
tant mountains, with the broad intervening 

86 



CASTLES AND RUINS. 87 

river, whose surface, like everything far and 
near, was covered with a mantle that sparkled 
in the sunlight. 

It has been often said with truth that all 
that is needed by our river to make it as 
picturesque as the Rhine or the Rhone, is his- 
tory and its accompaniments. We have now the 
green banks, the widened lakes, the narrow 
channels, palisades, and highlands, as beauti- 
ful and as romantic as theirs ; but they tell us 
that we have no such castles and ruins. Still 
we are making the attempt to equal them. 
Greystone, for instance, represents a castle with 
some effect. It has not the merit of ugliness 
certainly, but from its commanding height it 
is quite as desirable a structure to the eye as 
if it had more of fancied architectural merit and 
had been built a thousand years ago. We are 
trying our 'prentice hand at ruins, too. Our 
great landscape painter, Bierstadt, has offered 
an unwilling contribution to such scenic effect. 
A few miles above Greystone, perched upon a 
high hill on the opposite side of the road, stood 
his stately mansion. The fire has been more 
powerful than his brush. It has made a picture 
that can be seen for miles around, of lone 
chimneys and blackened walls, such as the 



88 WINTER SKETCHES. 

American tourist would hail with rapture if he 
should get a glimpse of them from a steamboat 
on the Rhine. 

Time will perhaps bring us our share of 
ruins, and then the Hudson will meet the 
approbation of the antiquary and the tourist ; 
but the lover of nature cannot reverse the 
engine of progress and turn the wheels of the 
ages back to the past. He can never see the 
Hudson again as he may see the Columbia 
now, rolling down through its forests, its 
silence broken only by the thunder, the storm, 
and the screams of wild fowl and beasts. 

Nor is it certain that the future has anything 
in store to replace this charming picture of the 
past. There are not likely to be any enduring 
ruins. Every stone of a dismantled building 
will be utilized by our practical descendants for 
a new house, for a railroad, or a garden wall, 
and the Hudson will never be more beautiful 
and attractive than it is to-day. 

These river towns are all much alike, sloping 
down from the Broadway road to the water- 
side with the same gradations, country-seats 
of the rich from the city, comfortable homes 
of the " well-to-do " residents, stores and 
shops, rookeries, saloons, and coal-yards, which 



RIVER TOWNS. 89 

border on the railroad and the river. Thus, 
society is defined by the grade of the land, and 
the two extremes would be antagonistic did 
not the happy medium preserve the balance. 

In the olden time most of the population 
was located by the docks for commercial con- 
venience, the dwellers upon the stage-road 
above subsisting on what they gained as 
hangers-on around the tavern and the stables. 
Most of those old caravansaries have long ago 
been demolished or put to other uses. The 
Vincent House, however, still holds its own 
on the turnpike at Tarrytown, modernized 
somewhat, but yet affording entertainment for 
man and beast. 

When 1 stop, as I sometimes do, and enter 
its bar-room with motive undisguised, I meet 
the faces of men whom I have known for years, 
fixtures there — men who know everything, 
because their fathers and grandfathers knew 
everything, and told it to them, about Revolu- 
tionary times. They do not agree in their 
knowledge, but that is a matter of small ac- 
count. " Them fellers that captured Andre," 
said one of them, " were part of a gang of 
Skinners. You needn't talk ; shut up. I've 
heard my gran'ther tell all about it, and don't 



9<D WINTER SKETCHES. 

you s'pose he knew ? Andre he didn't have 
money enough about him. That was what 
was the matter ; and they cal'lated, they did, 
that Gen. Washington's cash was better than 
the Britisher's promises." 

" Well, hain't I heard my gran'ther talk about 
it, too?" responded another resident of the 
bar-room. " He knowed 'em, he did, individ- 
ooally, and he said that if Andre's stirrups, 
saddle, horse, and all had been made of solid 
gold, and he'd offered it to 'em, they wouldn't 
have looked at it no more than they would at a 
copper cent." 

" I've hearn' tell," chimed in a little old man, 
" that the trouble with Andre was that he was 
out o' rum, and they wanted him to treat, and 
he couldn't. 'Tell you, if he had a got off it 
would a been a lesson for him in future — never 
git out o' rum. Ef his flask had not gin out, 
he could have said : ' Come, boys, let's set down 
here on the bank, take a drink, and talk over 
things good-natured.' There would^not have 
been no occasion for pulling off his boots." 

This suggestion was new to me, but the pro- 
pounder was not, perhaps, far out of the way 
in his general idea that a little more tact 
would have saved Andre. Dr. Coutant, an 



CAPTURE OF ANDRE. 9 1 

intelligent physician of the town, who has 
gathered a fund of information pertaining to 
the early history of Westchester County, does 
not credit the captors with any patriotic 
motive. 

There is documentary evidence, made 
public by the Rev. Daniel W. Teller ten years 
ago, which settles the question absolutely, and 
displays the conduct of the three " patriots," 
in a worse light than it had ever been viewed 
before. The gravest accusation that previ- 
ously had been made against them was that 
before they knew anything more of their 
prisoner than that he was a British officer, 
they had expressed their willingness to release 
him if he could offer them a sufficient induce- 
ment in money ; but it now appears that after 
having discovered the compromising papers in 
his boot, they agreed upon a sum of 500 or 
1000 guineas as his ransom, and that the 
negotiation failed simply because they could 
not obtain satisfactory security that it would 
be paid. Gen. Washington was not aware of 
all that had transpired between Andre and 
his captors when he made his first report, in 
which he says : — 

" A combination of extraordinary circum- 



92 WINTER SKETCHES. 

stances and unaccountable deprivation of mind 
in a man of the first abilities, and the virtue of 
three militia men, threw the Adjutant General 
of the British forces (with full proof of 
Arnold's intention) into our hands ; and but 
for the egregious folly or the bewildered con- 
ception of Lieut.-Col. Jamison who seemed 
lost in astonishment and not to have known 
what he was doing, I should have gotten 
Arnold." 

The militia men took Andre to Jamison, 
and Jamison, who seems never to have been 
suspected of complicity in the treason, 
although that is the only rational way of ac- 
counting for his conduct, despatched Andre 
with a guard to Arnold himself, sending him 
a letter detailing the circumstances of the 
capture, but transmitting the compromising 
papers to Washington who was upon his route 
from New England. 

Maj. Talmadge soon afterwards arrived at 
Jamison's quarters and having convinced his 
superior officer of his stupidity, started in pur- 
suit and brought Andre back, but strangely 
permitted the messenger to proceed with 
the letter. The result was that Arnold 
effected his escape, and on the second day 



GENERAL KING'S LETTER. 93 

after Andre's arrest he was brought to the 
quarters of a young lieutenant of the Second 
Regiment of Light Dragoons, under Col. Shel- 
don. Lieut. King, at that time scarcely of 
age, appears to have conducted himself with 
remarkable discretion and to have shown his 
good breeding as a gentleman. He after- 
wards became a general, and served with 
honor through the war. 

" In the year 18 17," says Mr. Teller, writing 
in 1877, " Gen. King was written to by a friend 
who desired to know the exact facts in relation 
to Maj. Andre's capture, etc. The following 
letter was written by Gen. King in reply, and, 
although previously solicited for publication, 
is now for the first time given to the public": 

RlDGEFlELD, June 17, 18 17. 
Dear Sir: 

Yours of the 9th is before me. 
The facts, so far as I am acquainted with 
them, I will state to the best of my ability or 
recollection. Paulding, Williams, and Van 
Wort I never saw before or since that event. 
I know nothing about them. The time and 
the place where they stopped Maj. Andre" 
seems to justify the character you have drawn 
of them. The truth is, to the imprudence of 
the man and not the patriotism of any one is 



94 WINTER SKETCHES. 

to be ascribed the capture of Maj. Andre. I 
was the first and only officer who had charge 
of him while at the headquarters of the Sec- 
ond Regiment of Light Dragoons, which was 
then at Esq. Gilbert's in South Salem. He 
was brought up by an adjutant and four 
men belonging to the Connecticut militia, 
under the command of Lieut.-Col. Jamison, 
from the lines near Tarrytown, a character 
under the disguised name of John Anderson. 
He looked somewhat like a reduced gentle- 
man. His small clothes were nankin, with 
long white top boots, in part, his undress mili- 
tary suit. His coat purple, with gold lace, 
worn somewhat threadbare, with a small- 
brimmed, tarnished beaver on his head. He 
wore his hair in a queue, with long, black 
band, and his clothes somewhat dirty. In this 
garb I took charge of him. After breakfast 
my barber came in to dress me — after which I 
requested him to undergo the same operation, 
which he did. 

When the ribbon was taken from his hair, 
I observed it full of powder. This circum- 
stance, with others that occurred, induced me 
to believe I had no ordinary person in charge. 

He requested permission to take the bed 
while his shirt and small clothes could be 
washed. I told him that was needless, for a 
change was at his service, which he accepted. 

We were close pent-up in a bed-room, with a 
guard at the door and the window. There 



GENERAL KING'S LETTER. 



95 



was a spacious yard before the door which he 
desired he might be permitted to walk in with 
me. 

I accordingly disposed of my guard in such 
manner as to prevent an escape. While walk- 
ing together, he observed, he must make a con- 
fidant of somebody, and he knew not a more 
proper person than myself, as I had appeared 
to befriend a stranger in distress. After set- 
tling the point between ourselves, he told me 
who he was, and gave me a short account of 
himself from the time he was taken at St. 
Johns in 1775 to that time. He requested 
pen and ink, and wrote immediately to Gen. 
Washington, declaring who he was. About 
midnight the express returned with orders 
from Gen. Washington to Col. Sheldon to 
send Maj. Andre immediately to headquarters. 

I started with him, and before I got to 
North Salem meeting-house met another ex- 
press with a letter directed to the officer 
who had Maj. Andre in charge, and which 
letter directed a circuitous route to head- 
quarters for fear of recapture, and gave an 
account of Arnold's desertion, etc., with direc- 
tions to forward the letter to Col. Sheldon. I 
did so, and before I got to the end of my 
journey I was joined by Capt. Hoodgers first, 
and after by Maj. Talmadge and Capt. Rogers. 
Having given you this clew, I proceed with 
the Major's own story. He said he came up 
the North River in the sloop of war Vulture, 



g6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

for the purpose of seeing a person by flag of 
truce. That was not, however, accomplished. 
Of course he had to come ashore in a skiff, and 
after he had done his business, the wind was 
so high, the Dutchman who took him ashore 
dared not venture to return him on board. 
The night following, the militia had lined the 
shore, so that no attempt would be made with 
safety. Consequently, he was furnished, after 
changing his clothes, with a Continental horse 
and Gen. Arnold's pass, and was to take a 
route by Peekskill, Crumpound, Pinesbridge, 
Sing Sing, Tarrytown, etc., to New York. 

Nothing occurred to disturb him on his route 
until he arrived at the last place, except at 
Crumpound. He told me his hair stood erect 
and his heart was in his mouth on meeting 
Col. Samuel B. Webb of our army face to face. 
An acquaintance of his said that Col. Stoddert 
knew him, and he thought that he was gone, 
but they kept moving along and soon passed 
each other. He then thought himself past all 
danger, and while ruminating on his good luck 
and hair-breadth escapes he was assailed by 
three bushmen near Tarrytown, who ordered 
him to stand. He said to them : " I hope, 
gentlemen, you belong to the lower party." 
" We do," says one. " So do I," says he, " and 
by the token of this ring and key you will let 
me pass. I am a British officer on business of 
importance, and must not be detained." One 



GENERAL KING'S LETTER. g? 

of them took his watch from him and then 
ordered him to dismount. 

The moment that was done, he found he 
was mistaken and he must shift his tone. He 
says, " I am happy, gentlemen, to find I am 
mistaken. You belong to the upper party 
and so do I, and to convince you of it, here is 
Gen. Arnold's pass," handing it to them. 
"Damn Arnold's pass," said they. "You 
said you were a British officer, where is your 
money ? " " Gentlemen, I have none about 
me," he replied. " You are a British officer, 
with a gold watch and no money ! Let us 
search him." They did so, but found none. 
Says one : " He has his money in his boots ; 
let's have them off and see." They took off 
his boots, and there they found his papers, but 
no money. Then they examined his saddle, 
but found none. He said he saw they had 
such a thirst for money, he would put them in 
the way to get it if they would be directed by 
him. He asked them to name their sum to 
deliver him at Kingsbridge. They answered 
him in this way: " If we deliver you at Kings- 
bridge, we shall be sent to the sugar-house, 
and you will save your money." He says : 
" If you will not trust my honor, two of you 
may stay with me and one shall go with the 
letter I will write. Name your sum. The 
sum was agreed upon, but I cannot recollect if 
it was 500 or 1000 guineas, but the latter, I 
think, was the sum. They held a consultation 
7 



98 WINTER SKETCHES. 

a considerable time, and finally they told him 
if he wrote, a party would be sent out and 
take them, and then they should all be prison- 
ers. They said they had concluded to take 
him to the commanding officer in the lines. 
They did so and retained the watch until Gen. 
Washington sent for them to Tappan, when 
the watch was restored to Maj. Andre. 

Thus, you see, had money been at command, 
after the imprudent confession of Maj. Andre, 
or any security given that the British would 
have put confidence in, he might have passed 
on to Sir Henry Clinton's headquarters with 
all his papers and Arnold's pass into the bar- 
gain. I do not recollect to have seen a true 
statement of this business in any history that 
has fallen into my hands. 



There is something infinitely touching in 
the relations of these two young officers. The 
heart of the Lieutenant was warmed with pity 
and sympathy for his captive, and no one can 
doubt from this recital and from what after- 
wards transpired, that if honor had permitted 
he would gladly have set him free. On the 
other hand, the British officer, fully appreciat- 
ing this sentiment and knowing that he was in 
the keeping of a gentleman, gave no hint of a 
readiness to purchase his liberty, as he had 



ANDRE AND HALE. 99 

openly done when he was dealing with the 
" bushmen." 

The friendship thus begun under such pain- 
ful circumstances grew stronger every day 
until the end of the sad story. The American 
Lieutenant accompanied the British Major to 
headquarters, passed days and nights with him 
in his prison chamber, walked with him to the 
gallows, and stood by him when he said : " I 
am reconciled to death, but not to the 
mode. It will be but a momentary pang," 
and then deliberately adjusted the rope to his 
neck with his own hands. 

Andre was a spy ; Nathan Hale was a spy. 

It requires more patriotism to be a spy than 
to serve in any other capacity in war. 

Let England cherish the memory of her 
hero ; let us cherish the memory of ours. 

Notwithstanding the verdict of history, 
which agrees with the declaration of Gen. 
King that " to the imprudence of the man, 
and not to the patriotism of any one, is to be 
ascribed the capture of Major Andre," the 
people of Tarrytown rightly determined that 
the spot of the transaction should not be for- 
gotten. They could not very well erect a 
monument to chronicle the great event which 



IOO WINTER SKETCHES. 

saved our country from unspeakable disaster, 
without symbolizing it by the actors, to what- 
soever motive at heart they might ascribe their 
conduct. 

For many years there had been standing by 
the roadside in private grounds an unpreten- 
tious little pyramid with a commemorative in- 
scription upon it. 

This was replaced in 1880 by a column of 
larger size, surmounted by a bronze statue 
representing one of the bushmen, musket in 
hand, in an attitude like that of the picket 
guard in the well-known statuette by Rogers. 
It is artistic in all respects excepting that the 
fingers of the hand held back in caution, are 
so very long that no one can fail to be struck 
by the want of proportion in this small particu- 
lar which detracts from the merit of the work 
as a whole. If Dr. Coutant would climb up 
by means of a ladder and amputate a few 
inches from each of those preposterous fingers, 
his surgical skill would commend, itself as 
much as his antiquarian lore to our grati- 
tude. 

The topography of the country has some- 
what changed since Irving made it the scene 



THE LEGEND OE SLEEPY HOLLOW. IOI 

of " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." We are 
told that 

" In the centre of the road stood an enormous 
tulip tree, which towered like a giant above all 
the other trees of the neighborhood and 
formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were 
gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form 
trunks of other trees, twisting down almost to 
the earth and rising again into the air. It was 
connected with the tragical story of the unfort- 
unate Andre, who had been taken prisoner 
hard by, and was universally known by the 
name of Major Andre's tree. . . . About 200 
yards from the tree a small brook crossed the 
road and ran into a marshy and thickly 
wooded glen known by the name of Wiley's 
swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side 
served for a bridge over this stream. On that 
side of the road where the brook entered the 
wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted 
thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous 
gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the 
severest trial. It was at this identical spot 
that the unfortunate Andre was captured, and, 
under the covert of these chestnuts and pines 
were the sturdy yeomen concealed who sur- 
prised him. This has ever since been consid- 
ered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feel- 
ings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone 
after dark. . . Just at this moment a plashy 
tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sen- 



102 WINTER SKETCHES. 

sitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of 
the grove, on the margin of the brook, he be- 
held something huge, misshapen, black, and 
towering." 

This brook no longer runs across the road, 
but as the grade has been improved, it flows 
through a culvert far beneath the present 
level, and would scarcely be noticed by the 
passing traveller. Here it was that old Gun- 
powder took the bit in his teeth and pursued 
his mad race side by side with the headless 
horseman. They reached the road which 
turns off to Sleepy Hollow, but " Gunpowder, 
who seemed possessed with a demon, instead 
of keeping up it, made an opposite turn and 
plunged headlong down hill to the left." 

The tulip tree has long since disappeared, 
the thick woods have been cut down, and 
the marsh has been drained. This down- 
hill road has also been somewhat diverted 
from its original line, but people who follow it 
generally imagine that Sleepy Hollow is at its 
base, and that the bridge crossing Pocantico 
Creek is where the final catastrophe occurred. 
But that is neither Sleepy Hollow nor the 
bridge. The house of Hans Van Ripper, with 
whom Ichabod boarded, was in Sleepy Hollow, 



THE OLD LOG SCHOOL-HOUSE. 103 

higher up, on what is now the Bedford 
road. 

There, also, was the old log school-house, 
since replaced by a building of more modern 
architecture. An old lady of the neighborhood 
perfectly remembers the original structure, 
" the windows partly glazed and partly patched 
with leaves of old copy-books." Farmer Van 
Tassel must have lived at a considerable dis- 
tance south of Sleepy Hollow, as the peda- 
gogue had found it necessary to borrow a horse 
for the occasion of the party. Old Van Ripper 
was well paid for the loan, for he made himself 
and Gunpowder immortal among the rest. 

Thus we can trace nearly all the localities of 
the tale and yet agree with the cautious Mr. 
Knickerbocker in his comments upon it : " Still 
he thought the story a little on the extrava- 
gant ; there were one or two points on which he 
had his doubts." The old bridge, now taken 
away, was further up the stream, and the road 
has been somewhat changed accordingly. 
Therefore the headless horseman is no longer 
seen. He probably rode down to the brink 
one dark night, and, unaware of the removal, 
plunged into the stream, and rider and horse 
were drowned. 



104 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Fanny trotted as quietly over the new bridge 
as if none of these wonderful events had tran- 
spired a century ago. 

A few rods beyond is the old church — not 
whitewashed now, but showing the gray color 
of the rock of which it is built. There are 
signs of some outward renovation, which do 
not detract materially from the appearance of 
age, and the little pepper-box belfry still con- 
tains the original bell, imported, with many of 
the inside fixtures, from Holland. On a tablet 
above the door we read, " Erected by Frederick 
Phillips and Catharine Van Cortlandt, his wife, 
1699." It stands as an outpost on the southern 
wall of a great city of the dead, where its 
founders with successive generations of their 
tenants repose, and where later generations lie 
side by side with them, people who came to 
possess themselves of their land when living, 
against their will and protest, but who share it 
with them now in peace. The little bell called 
the first settlers together to worship God in the 
ritual and language of their mother church. 
Afterward the old Dutch liturgy was abandoned 
for more modern doctrines expressed in English. 
At last, for all practical purposes, there is no 
more service of any kind, excepting during 



GRAVE OF IRVING. 1 05 

the month of August, when the Antiquarian 
Society, whose property the building has be- 
come, open it for preaching, rather for purposes 
of curiosity than for devotion. 

In this cemetery is the grave of Irving. 
When I visited it a few years ago and stood 
by the simple white slab on which is inscribed 
his name and the date of his birth and death, 
and saw that it was evidently new, I asked the 
keeper if it could be possible that all this time 
should have gone by with nothing to designate 
the spot. " Oh, no, indeed ; " he replied, " a 
stone was put up almost immediately, but the 
curiosity-hunters chipped it to pieces, and this 
has taken its place. They will probably serve 
it in the same way and then there will be 
another." 

And yet let us not too hastily accuse them 
of desecrating his grave. The stone was not 
broken down and strewed around with mali- 
cious intent. Each little bit may have been 
carried away with thoughtlessness, but with 
pious motive, and wherever it is, it may be 
cherished as a token sacred to his memory. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Along the Tappaan Zee. — The Pathfinder s Home. 
— The Old Van Cortlandt Manor-House. — 
Up the Croton. — Two Views of the New 
Dam. — Revolutionary Memories. — Canaan- 
ites of the Seventeenth Century. 

The old Albany Turnpike, as it is still some- 
times called beyond Tarrytown, where I do 
not remember having seen any more sign- 
boards indicating that it is Broadway, is true 
to its name for the intervening six miles be- 
fore we reach Sing Sing, the country residence 
of New York ex-Aldermen and ex-financiers 
in general. They are there, solving the prob- 
lem of capital and labor by equalization with 
the horny-handed sons of toil who erstwhile 
worked with revolvers, bowie-knives, and bur- 
glars' tools. 

The road is all " up hill and down dale," 
passing over eminences that command some 
of the finest views of the Hudson where it 

106 



1 ' THE PA THFINDER. " I QJ 

spreads itself out into the wide Tappaan Zee, 
forming a picturesque lake at the base of 
the opposite mountains. Notwithstanding the 
eligibility of the many commanding sites, 
fine mansions do not abound. It is somewhat 
too far from the great business mart for men 
to go to town every morning and return every 
afternoon. If the river be followed still 
further to the Highlands, where the scenery is 
most impressive, or to Poughkeepsie and 
even beyond, where it is still beautiful if not 
so wild, it will be found bordered at greater 
intervals either by mansions of retired gentry 
who go to spend the last years of their lives 
in the country, or by villas for merely summer 
occupation. 

On this bit of turnpike stands a fine house 
once owned and occupied by a man now re- 
tired from public notice, but who in his day 
was one of the foremost characters of the 
country. " The Pathfinder" he was called in 
his youth, when, full of enthusiasm and love 
for adventure, he traversed the prairie deserts, 
discovered the Great Salt Lake beyond the 
Rocky Mountains, and led his band of avant 
couriers over the Sierras Nevadas down the 
slope to the Pacific shore. He was the first 



IOS WINTER SKETCHES. 

to unfurl the national flag in California, and to 
aid in founding a new empire in the West. 

There he gained wealth and the honor 
which made him the Free-soil candidate for 
the Presidency. In the war of the Rebel- 
lion he was the pioneer of freedom, the first to 
declare, before he was justified by the progress 
of events, that the war was a struggle for the 
liberty of the slave. Here on the Hudson, in 
a paradise of forest and shrubbery, he estab- 
lished his home. Here he and " our Jessie," 
as the people delighted to call her, a woman 
whose attractions and commanding presence 
entitled her to the leadership of society in 
Washington, made their happy and luxurious 
dwelling-place, dispensing elegant hospitality, 
and surrounding themselves with the best and 
the most cultured of the land. Then misfort- 
une came upon them. The great Mariposa 
grant of thousands of acres, exceeding duke- 
doms of the Old World, was wrenched from 
their hands, their lovely home was "sacrificed 
and became the property of others, and they 
were almost thrown upon the charities of the 
world. 

But are republics ungrateful ? O, no, Fre- 
mont was rewarded in his old age for all that 



VAN CORTLANDT MANOR-HOUSE. IO9 

he had done for the nation. They made him 
Governor of Arizona, with a salary large enough 
for a small politician, and they went to live and 
to be buried alive in those hot and desert 
lands. Strange contrast this from their 
shaded lawns on the Hudson! They soon 
came back to the East, and are now— who 
knows where ? — ending their days in obscurity 
and neglect. Thus passes the glory of the 
world. New heroes have come upon the stage 
and gone, and the Pathfinder, too, is dead, al- 
though he still lives. 

Soon after passing through the village of 
Sing Sing, the post-road makes a sudden turn 
to the left, and spans the Croton River with a 
substantial bridge near its mouth. On the op- 
posite bank stands the time-honored Van Cort- 
landt manor house, one of the most interest- 
ing relics of ancient days. 

It was built by Stephanus Van Cortlandt, 
the first "lord of the manor," in 1681, the 
date as chronicled on the door-post at the 
entrance. It was evidently intended origi- 
nally rather for a fortress than for a dwelling- 
house, the loopholes for musketry used against 
the Indians which indicate this, being still in 
such condition for defence that I have some- 



IIO WINTER SKETCHES. 

times wondered that the present lady of the 
manor does not bring them into use to ward 
off the many strangers whose curiosity attracts 
them to the spot. But that is not the dispo- 
sition of the amiable and courtly hostess who 
has so often entertained me and others at her 
hospitable board. Proud she is, and well may 
be, of the history of her late husband's ances- 
try, of the portraits of the Van Cortlandts, 
from the first Stephanus down to the present, 
of their trophies and memorials, of the origi- 
nal charter from the crown, of wonderful 
curios of plate and crockery, of the old home 
itself, solidly built of bricks said to have been 
brought from Holland, of its wainscoted 
walls, huge fireplaces, venerable chairs, and 
the dark mahogany table, around which an- 
cient Dutchmen first made merry, and the 
great generals of the Revolution afterwards 
did justice to its cheer when Col. Philip Van 
Cortlandt was the master of the house. 

He himself was one of the bravest of the 
brave, a man without fear and without re- 
proach. His own incorruptibility led him to 
suspect Benedict Arnold long before his trea- 
son, and in his journal he alludes in terms by 
no means complimentary to him as appropriat- 



THE VAN CORTLANDTS. Ill 

ing the property of the Government to his 
own use. Familiar is the story of the attempt 
to bribe Ethan Allen, and of his reply to the 
offer of a large tract of land from the King. 
" It reminds me of the promise of the devil, 
on one occasion, to give away all the kingdoms 

of the earth, when the d d rascal didn't 

own a foot of the ground." So, in the begin- 
ning of the war, according to the family chron- 
icle, Gov. Tryon came up to Croton, and, in- 
ducing Van Cortlandt to walk with him to the 
top of the highest hill on his estate, promised 
him all the land in sight, and a title besides, 
if he would adhere to the royal cause. Tryon 
received, if possible, a more indignant reply, 
and hastily embarked upon his sloop to return 

to New York. 

The old burgomaster, Oloff Stephense, the 
head of the family, has had no occasion to be 
ashamed of any of his posterity. He was the 
original settler, having landed in New Amster- 
dam in 1638. A thrifty old Dutchman he was, 
who instantly began to acquire property. 
But Stephanus, his first-born on this conti- 
nent, was still more adventurous. He bought 
immense tracts of land from the Indians, and 
the colony soon afterwards coming under 



I I 2 WINTER SKETCHES. 

British rule, he consolidated all his territory 
and obtained the royal charter, still carefully 
preserved, which created him the first lord 
of the manor. The area of his possessions 
extended from the Croton River twenty miles 
north, and from the Hudson east to the Con- 
necticut line. 

Mr. Henry George would have looked upon 
the ownership of so much land by one man as 
a heinous offence. According to his theory, 
the Indians, who had previously held it in 
common, must have been a happy and pros- 
perous set of men. Nor would he have stopped 
to consider what was sure to be the distribu- 
tion of it. Children were born, and children's 
children's inheritances divided and dismem- 
bered it, until to-day the possessor of the 
manor-house holds but 2000 acres, all the rest 
having gone into the hands of strangers. For 
one or two generations real and personal prop- 
erty may remain in a family, and then all is 
scattered, perhaps to be heaped up -again by 
some one at the bottom who exchanges places 
with those who were at the top. Our philos- 
opher would have it all equalized at once and 
kept forever on an equality. This scheme 
will be successful when the tides cease to ebb 



DISTINGUISHED GUESTS. 113 

and flow, and when Nature, convinced of her 
error, throws down the Rocky Mountains and 
the Sierras to convert the ground into building- 
lots and farms. 

Mrs. Van Cortlandt, who is withal a lady of 
rare literary ability, is at present compiling a 
work which will be of great interest not only 
to the various branches of the family, but to 
the public in connection with their history. 
The participation of Westchester County in 
the events of the Revolutionary war will find 
a prominent place. On one of the proof-sheets 
we were permitted to see, we read an extract 
from a letter written by Pierre van Cortlandt, 
November 13, 1775, to his son, the Colonel: 
"Thursday night were here to supper and 
breakfast of Col. Hammond's regiment about 
three hundred men. They said they drank two 
hogsheads of cider." And doubtless there was a 
store of Madeira in the cellar for more distin- 
guished guests. It is added, " Franklin tarried 
here on his way back from Canada in 1776. 
Here, too, came Lafayette, Rochambeau, and 
the Duke de Lauzun." Washington was here 
many times while the army lay on the shores 
of the Hudson and along the heights of the 
Croton. In more peaceful days the great 



114 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Whitefield had preached, standing on the broad 
veranda, to spell-bound crowds on the lawn, 
who had been summoned from miles around 
by horsemen sent out by Van Cortlandt. 

All this pageant passed before me in a 
vision of the past, and then it was speedily 
dispelled as the shrill whistle of a passing 
locomotive echoed over the now quiet lone- 
liness of the scene. Then, bidding adieu to 
the lady of the manor, I descended the steps 
over which the spurs of Revolutionary heroes 
had clanked more than a century ago, and 
mounted my horse from the block where they 
were accustomed to take their "stirrup-cup" 
to the health of their entertainers. 

Turning off from the Hudson at this point, 
we now began to follow the Croton towards 
its source. The little river was " dark as win- 
ter in its flow," for the boulders covered with 
snow and with shining icy jewels made the 
water black by their contrast, and the recent 
freshet, which had not subsided, was playing 
wild music along the foamy channel. For 
miles, until we reached the lake beyond the 
present reservoir, the stream sparkled and 
danced in the sunlight of its winter glory. 



CRO TON RESER VOIR. I I 5 

But the end must come to everything, and 
although 

" Rivers to the ocean run, 
Nor stay in all their course," 

the Croton will be one of the exceptions. Its 
happy days will soon pass away, and it will 
settle down to dull repose as a motionless lake. 
" A stagnant pond it will be," said Mr. Orlando 
Potter, whom I met in my travels. 

"Well, Mr. Potter," I said, "you have 
fought till the end against the scheme, but its 
advocates have triumphed over you." "Yes," 
he replied, " but they have to contend against 
the Almighty now. First, they have to sink 
for a foundation no feet to a porous bed-rock 
that may let all the water out as fast as it 
runs in, and then the dam is to be 177 feet 
above the ground level, the water to flow back 
more than eight miles, and to spread itself 
from one to two miles up into the valleys. 
What a reservoir that will be for a little river 
like this to fill ! What with the leakage and 
the evaporation, it cannot be kept full in hot 
weather. There will then be a slimy border 
of decomposed vegetation, breeding malaria 
around the country, and the putrid water will 



1 1 6 WINTER SKE TCHES. 

also breed pestilence in the city. If the job is 
ever completed, $20,000,000 will not cover the 
cost. But that is the least consideration in 
this terrible blunder." 

Such was the opinion, and I doubt not the 
sincere opinion, of the defeated general of the 
pessimists. On the other hand, a triumphant 
optimist who, by the bye, would get rid of a 
large tract of land, worth from $50 to $100 
per acre for farming purposes, at a valuation of 
$300, pitched his jubilate in the highest key. 
" What a grand idea it was ! " he exclaimed. 
" Now the city can spread itself indefinitely. 
Ten million people will have all the water they 
want, and then what a thing of beauty, what a 
joy forever, this lovely sheet of water will be! 
Ten miles long, indenting the shore with 
charming little bays where the tall shadows of 
the hills and trees will reflect themselves as in 
the mirror lake of the Yosemite ; boulevards 
all around this great expanse, country seats 
with lawns sloping to the banks and—" 

"But," I asked, interrupting him, " how 
about the drainage from these houses?" 
" Oh," he replied, " that is the easiest thing in 
the world to arrange. Great mains with pipes 
to cross the brooks can be laid along the 



ANDRE'S ROUTE. U/ 

shores, and not a particle of pollution can enter 
the lake, as it will all be carried down below 

the dam." 

Such are the differences of opinion which 
may be decided at some future day when the 
younger readers of these pages are gray- 
headed. 

Turning from the river at Pine's Bridge, a 
locality made famous by the passage of Andre, 
we follow the road to Bedford. It is certain 
that Andre crossed this bridge. Nothing else 
pertaining to his exciting ride is more sure. 
That he landed at Verplanck's Point, and was 
afterwards captured at Tarrytown, is not more 
so, but he appears to have had so little topo- 
graphical knowledge, and was naturally^ so 
confused, that, in his narrative to Lieut. King, 
he could not give an exact account of his jour- 
ney. Historians have since duly lined it out 
and have given him a great many parallel roads 
to travel upon. If you ask any old farmer in 
Verplanck's, Peekskill, Shrub Oak, or York- 
town, about it, he will say that he has "hear'n 
tell that Andree passed directly by his house." 
It is at all events undeniable that he could not 
have reached Tarrytown without crossing this 
bridge unless he forded the river. 



Il8 WINTER SKETCHES. 

The people hereabouts are " champion 
liars " as to the events of the Revolution. 
This propensity of theirs has been serviceable 
in giving Fenimore Cooper many hints, which 
he has judiciously woven into a thread of 
fiction, more resembling truth than the alleged 
truths themselves. It was from a citizen of 
Bedford that he heard of one Enoch Crosby, 
who had the reputation of having been an 
American spy. Crosby grew into Harvey 
Birch, and Harvey Birch became a reality. 

War began at an early day on the borders 
of New York and Connecticut, long before 
the Revolutionary struggle in which the bat- 
tles of White Plains and Ridgefield were 
fought. The Dutch and the English enter- 
tained the same views of the Indian question 
that are prevalent among their descendants. 
The latter gave for the land all along Long 
Island Sound, extending sixteen miles inland, 
twelve coats, twelve hoes, twelve hatchets, 
twelve glasses, twelve knives, two kettles, and 
five fathoms of wampum. There was a treaty 
" reserving the liberty of hunting and fishing 
for the Indians." 

But our ancestors came to loggerheads with 
the Indians on the " fishery question," as we 



INDIA N MASS A CRE. 1 1 9 

are now embroiled with the Canadians. They, 
too, passed measures of retaliation, not paper 
measures, like those of Congress, but measures 
of powder and ball, such as our down-East 
smack owners would like to have the nation 
pass on their account against Canada. The re- 
sult of the fight in 1644 was very satisfactory. 
One hundred and thirty troops, most of them 
Dutch, under Capt. John Underhill, exter- 
minated 700 " savages," first setting their vil- 
lage on fire and then driving men, women, and 
children back into the flames. It is mentioned 
by the historian as a proof of the incorrigible 
obstinacy of these people that they perished 
without uttering a single cry. But, like the 
Israelites of old, the Dutch considered that 
God was present on the occasion to help them, 
for " the Lord collected most of our enemies 
there to celebrate some peculiar festival." 

There is now a Quaker meeting-house hard 
by the spot of that inhuman massacre. This 
peaceful sect came here too late for the poor 
Indians. There was no William Penn among 
those cruel Dutch to stay their hand, and to 
inculcate the policy of peace by which he ob- 
tained his conquests, and which gave to Penn- 
sylvania the true title-deeds for her lands, 



120 WINTER SKETCHES. 

while those of New York and New England 
were written in blood. 

The Indians having been exterminated, the 
white men who became possessors of the soil 
occupied it by right of might, as the Jews oc- 
cupied Canaan after the destruction of the 
Amorites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and 
other similar savages who had been smitten by 
" the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 
Then their own turn likewise came to be mas- 
sacred or carried into captivity — and they 
thought it hard. So the people of Bedford 
failed to appreciate the retribution which, we 
are told by the highest authority, descends 
upon later generations for the sins of their 
fathers, when, in 1779, Tarleton swooped down 
upon them and burned their town. The 
neighborhood was the scene of many skir- 
mishes during the Revolutionary war, and in 
most of them the patriots, though far exceed- 
ing the British in numbers, were defeated, not 
so much because of their cowardice 'as for want 
of arms and discipline. But what Bedford 
lacked in military skill it compensated the 
country for in giving birth to the greatest dip- 
lomat of the time. In that capacity John 



A FRIEAWLY WELCOME. 121 

Jay was of more account than regiments of 
soldiers or parks of artillery. 

Night was closing in upon us again. Fanny 
and I on a roundabout road had already ac- 
complished thirty miles. Ten miles beyond, 
over the Connecticut line, lay the village of 
Ridgefield to which we hastened on. Again 
from another domestic hearth the cheerful 
wood fire gleamed, and again I was welcomed 
to the house of my old schoolmate and friend. 

" I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, 
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude ; 
Yet grant me still a friend in my retreat 
Whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet. 

" Hast thou a friend ? Thou hast indeed 
A rich and large supply ; 
Treasure to serve your every need, 
Well managed, till you die." 

Yes, it is very pleasant to have " a rich and 
large supply" of friends along the road. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Neiv York as a Summer Residence. — The 
Country in Winter. — The Old Boston Post- 
Road. — On the Way again to Ridge fie Id. 

The thermometer is not always an indicator 
of temperature. That depends quite as much 
upon the quantity of moisture in the atmos- 
phere as upon conditions that are frequently 
only apparent. In the high altitudes of the 
West we are less uncomfortable in our shirt- 
sleeves with the mercury at zero than we find 
ourselves in New York when wrapped in flan- 
nels and ulsters, the glass showing -thirty de- 
grees. 

Another atmospheric peculiarity we cannot 
fail to notice. Directly upon the seashore the 
climate, whether the thermometer corresponds 
or not, is milder than it is ten or a dozen 

122 



CHANGE OF AIR. \2$ 

miles inland. Thus, as Brighton and Hastings 
afford relief from the bitter winter winds of 
London, so Atlantic City and Long Branch 
have become refuges from New York, and the 
value of Coney Island in this respect will ere 
long be appreciated. 

Undoubtedly people become acclimated to 
New York, and find its temperature, as well 
as everything else that really makes it attrac- 
tive, the best in the world. But these are 
they who never go away from their home, and 
who consequently never experience any incon- 
venience in returning to it. Perhaps, after 
all, they are more contented than vagrants 
who wander all over the world in search of 
happiness because they fancy that on Man- 
hattan, where it could easiest be attained, the 
air does not agree with them. Nevertheless, it 
must be admitted that there is at least " a 
change of air" experienced by going either to 
the seashore or to the country in winter as well 
as in summer. Indeed, if I were compelled to 
divide the time by seasons between city and 
country, I would unhesitatingly give the 
summer to the former and the winter to the 
latter. 



124 WINTER SKETCHES. 

I would like to be a millionaire so that I 
could buy up and pull down the old rookeries 
which were once the chosen abodes of New 
York merchants, on State Street, but are now 
converted into immigrant boarding-houses and 
tenements, and build dwelling houses in their 
stead. I fancy that it would be a good 
investment. What more can a quietly dis- 
posed family desire than a house comfort- 
able at all seasons, one which in the summer 
looks out on the green lawns and trees about 
Castle Garden, where the sultry winds of July 
and August are tempered and refrigerated by 
their passage over the salt waters of the bay 
and the rivers? There, perhaps, at no very 
distant day, residents of the New York that is 
to be above the Harlem will find their summer 
homes, when Trinity Church shall stand alone 
in its rural cemetery and the fragments of 
Wall Street may come into use for fencing the 
lawns sloping to the river banks and the 
market-gardens along the sides of "Broadway. 
There will then be no question of getting out 
of New York. New York will get out of itself. 
The Harlem River will be its southern boun- 
dary, and it will stretch away to the north, 
with the new Croton Lake, ten miles long and 



A WINTER MORNING. 1 25 

three miles wide, for its centre, and its upper 
limit will be somewhere near where I am now 
writing, on the shores of Lake Mohegan. 

I look upon it this lovely February morning 
from my window, its surface covered with a 
sparkling field of new-fallen snow, the pines 
and firs surrounding it bending under the white 
plumage so beautifully contrasting with their 
green, the oaks and maples with frosted barks 
and silver icicles glittering in the sunlight. 
This is winter, glorious winter. It quickens 
the pulse of age and brings back the memories 
of youth, the jingling bells, the rosy cheeks, the 
ringing laughter of the sleigh-ride of the olden 
time, the music of the gliding skates — all the 
wholesome, life-giving exercise in its pure, 
bracing air ; and still to me it is more joyous 
than the gentle zephyrs and balmy airs, green 
landscapes and tropical verdure of the South, 
that boasts of its sunny clime, but where 
never sun shone with a splendor like this of 
to-day. 

The story of " The Pioneers" opens with 
a charming winter scene, depicted with the 
graphic pencil of nature that Cooper always 
held in his hand. The keen atmosphere makes 
our blood tingle, and we luxuriate before the 



126 WINTER SKETCHES. 

blazing logs in imagination as if we had partic- 
ipated in their warmth. The winds are as cold 
now on the banks of the Otsego, but the music 
of the bells is not so merry, for fashion has 
decreed a noiseless gliding over the snow, and 
the cheerful fireside has given place to abom- 
inable stoves, furnaces, and steam-heaters. 

In the early days of our history, winter 
sports were more appreciated because there 
was so little sport of any kind. The business 
of life was serious. The minds of our fathers 
were occupied mainly with the questions how 
should they get a living in this life by works, 
and how by faith they should make sure of a 
life to come. Since their day, the struggle for 
existence has become less arduous. Wealth, 
bringing luxury, has poured in upon their de- 
scendants ; the rough edges of religion have 
been smoothed off; and shocking as the idea 
would have been to their ancestors, men have 
determined to get out of it all the enjoyment 
which the world can afford. Some of the 
morning newspapers find space for reports of 
sermons on Monday, but on every other day 
of the week their columns are filled with the 
particulars of horse and yacht races, base-ball 
and foot-ball games. These, for the most part, 



WINTER SPOR TS. 1 2 7 

are summer sports, but now is the season for 
" carnivals," ice-boating, skating, sleigh-riding, 
and tobogganing, the most healthy and invig- 
orating of them all. Perhaps, by and by, as 
autumn excursions on horseback have lately 
become popular, the same delightful exercise 
may be taken in winter, the season of all 
seasons which I have found from oft-repeated 
experience to be for it the most enjoyable. 

It is now 1888. We parted company a year 
ago at Ridgefield, Conn., and if you please we 
will start again from there. Fanny and I have 
since that time borne each other's burdens. 
She has carried me often over many roads, and 
I have paid her stable bills. Her appearance 
still denotes content, and she never gives me 
any cause of complaint, excepting that on the 
approach of a railroad engine she manifests 
fear, and turns about, trotting away from it 
till its noise subsides. 

It is a female characteristic to be afraid of 
something. A steam engine is as objectionable 
to a mare as a cow or a mouse is to a woman. 
We should make due allowance for this imper- 
fection in the house or in the stable. If 
Fanny could speak, she would doubtless find 
some weak point in my character. I am glad 



128 WINTER SKETCHES. 

that she cannot. We do not like to be told of 
our faults. 

As I am unable to persuade any human 
friend to accompany me on my long rides, 
our companionship becomes closer. Fanny 
knows the pocket in which I keep the lumps 
of sugar. When she gets one of these little 
dainties, she acknowledges it by a cordial 
shake of hoof and hand. She knows perfectly 
well whether we are about to take a long or a 
short journey, for in the first case I always 
show her the small roll of baggage before it is 
buckled upon the saddle. So she adapts her 
gait to the requirements of the trip. We talk 
together along the road — that is to say, I talk 
to her and she listens. Many people think 
this is the best way to carry on a conversation. 
It is not uncommon, and it always affords 
pleasure to one person at least. By this 
means the rider may place himself en rapport 
with his horse. There is no exact English for 
this French term. It means a great deal — not 
precisely that a man is any part of a horse, or 
that a horse is any part of a man, but that the 
man for the time being is equine, and the 
horse is human in his feelings. 

To the saying of Terence that because he 



SOUND BELIEF. 129 

was a man nothing human could be foreign to 
him, I would add that for the same reason 
nothing about a horse can be foreign to me. 
I believe that a horse has a soul. The Bible 
tells us that there are horses in heaven, and 
that they came down from thence to take up 
Elijah. I think that even bad men get to 
heaven at last, and there is no reason why 
horses, who are better than they are, should 
not get there before them. Several years ago 
this question of the immortality of animals 
was discussed in the columns of the New York 
Evening Post. It was shown that many men 
of very sound minds believed in it — prophets 
and apostles of old, like Isaiah and John the 
Revelator ; later theologians, like Martin 
Luther, and scientists like Cuvier and Agas- 
siz. 

It matters not how we found ourselves at 
Ridgefield again, so far as the description of 
the road is concerned. The town is easy of 
access by the old Boston Post-road through 
White Plains and Bedford, fifty-three miles 
from New York. Fanny and I have often 
travelled over it, and I have called to her at- 
tention the few remaining mile-stones and the 
tumble-down aspect of old farm-houses long 
9 



130 WINTER SKETCHES. 

since deserted. I might have asked her, and 
obtained an answer as satisfactory as I can get 
from others or from myself, how it is that the 
farmers hereabouts and the farmers of New 
York State and New England manage to live. 

When these large houses were occupied, 
their inhabitants did live by raising produce for 
the city markets before railroads were known. 

According to the theory of the protection- 
ists, they should live better now by supplying 
the factory establishments which have been 
built up in their neighborhood. But stubborn 
facts may disprove any economic theory. The 
farmer's occupation for everything but the 
sale of milk is gone. The articles that he once 
sold he is obliged now to buy. Even his hay 
sometimes comes from the West. His land is 
not worth the half of its price of fifty years 
ago ; and yet, although he acts in direct op- 
position to the scheme of Senator Frye, who 
counsels us to sell everything and buy nothing 
if we desire to be successful, he- does live 
as he did not live in the olden time, when he 
and his family wore homespun dresses, when 
he worked, his wife worked, his sons and 
daughters worked, and when he had nothing 
but hard-wood furniture and rag carpets. 



THE BENEFICENT TARIFF. 13 1 

Now, his boys, if they have not " gone into 
business," drive fast horses, his girls wear seal- 
skin sacks and silk dresses, make music with 
the piano instead of with milk pans and butter 
churns, and they all live in a new nicely-fur- 
nished house and have plenty of money. 
How is that Fanny ? Fanny shook her head, 
by which I understood that, with all her horse 
sense, she could not fathom it. " I can't see," 

I continued, " how the farmer can be so pros- 
perous when he not only sells nothing, but 
buys everything, and that at a high price, in 
order to support home industries, which give 
him nothing in return. I think I'll ask the 
philosopher of the Tribune" Fanny tossed 
her head. I did not exactly understand if this 
was in token of approbation or contempt ; but 
when I added, " He will probably attribute it 
to the beneficent tariff," she snorted outright. 
I saw that she was thinking of oats, and won- 
dering how, if the price should be advanced 
from forty-three to sixty cents per bushel, 
either she or I would be benefited. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Ridge field to Danbury. — The Burning of the 
Town in 1777.— The Battle and Other Revo- 
lutionary Incidents. 

The mercury stood at six degrees above 
zero in the morning at Ridgefield. It had 
rained on the previous day, and now the sun 
shone as it shines here through a foliage and 
over a landscape of glittering silver. In- 
doors the prospect was as satisfactory as it 
was charming without. The cheerful fire in 
the breakfast-room, the aroma of the coffee, 
the juicy steak, the frequent relays of buck- 
wheat cakes that came upon the table hot 
from the griddle, and the mug of hard cider 
which always goes with a genuine country 
breakfast — above all, the society of my hos- 
pitable entertainers — were strong inducements 
for delay. But the vis inertia? of the after 
breakfast easy-chair was at length overcome, 
and wrapping my stirrups with straw, pulling 

132 



THE ROAD TO DANBURY. 133 

the blanket back over my legs in the manner 
heretofore described, and drawing my cap 
down over my ears, I was ready to start on 
the road to Danbury. 

It was over many hills which the rain of the 
previous day, now become ice and covering 
the snow, had adapted to the purpose of 
toboggan sliding rather than to that of rid- 
ing, unless horseshoes are exceptionally well 
sharpened. Under these circumstances the 
rider who supposes himself very careful is 
apt to walk his horse slowly over the ground, 
especially when descending hills. That is an 
easily demonstrated mistake, for a little re- 
flection must convince him that the animal 
should be put to a hard gallop so that the 
shoe corks may strike heavily and effectively 
into the ice. The necessity for doing this 
caused the distance of ten miles to be over- 
come in little more than an hour, and that 
was the end of the day's journey, for before 
our arrival the clouds had gathered and the 
snow had begun to drive in our faces after the 
manner, though in a milder degree, of a Mon- 
tana blizzard. 

It was a harder road to travel for the Brit- 
ish troops in years ago. From Mr. Bailey, 



134 WINTER SKETCHES. 

the witty editor of the Danbury News, who 
can be serious occasionally, and who in one of 
his serious moods has done good service in 
writing some interesting historical sketches, I 
obtained more information than I can com- 
press into this chapter, pertaining to the events 
of the Revolutionary war. 

To go back to the time when Danbury was 
a mere protoplasm, existing under the Indian 
name of Pahquioque, it was bought from the 
natives and honestly paid for in trinkets, blan- 
kets, and rum by some adventurous Yankees 
who had found their way from the New Eng- 
land coast first to the valley of the Connecti- 
cut, and thence had come as near as they 
dared to approach to their former enemies, the 
Dutchmen, here establishing an outpost in 
1684. They underwent the usual experiences 
of border warfare, being often alarmed by 
the demonstrations of the Indians, but never 
having any serious conflicts, perhaps because 
they were always in a condition of defence. 

But a small area of the Connecticut valley 
was then occupied, and it is therefore difficult 
to imagine any motive but that of Puritan 
aggressiveness that could lead them to insti- 
tute a war against nature in this rugged coun- 



DA NB UR Y IN DANGER. \ 3 5 

try when the rich and easily explored river 
valley lay open before them, a hundred miles 
to the north and a hundred miles to the south. 
The Puritans were like the Irishman who 
always wants somebody to tread on the tail of 
his coat, and like Mark Tapley who was 
happy only when he was miserable. For mu- 
tual protection this devoted band lived in 
block-houses together, and from them they 
went out four or five miles every day to cul- 
tivate the best soil they could find. After 
they had escaped all danger from the Indians, 
there came the French war to disturb but not 
to injure them. Their real suffering came at 
last in the war of the Revolution, when nearly 
the whole town was destroyed and the earn- 
ings of a century were annihilated by the 
flames in a single day. 

In April, 1777, Gov. Tryon came from New 
York with 2,000 men, and landing from their 
boats at Fairfield, they marched to Danbury 
for the purpose of destroying a considerable 
quantity of Continental stores that had there 
been collected. These were " guarded by a 
few Continental troops without arms." So 
the American story runs, and it is added that 
on the approach of the British, they " with- 



I36 WINTER SKETCHES. 

drew." It would not have been to their dis- 
credit if the truth had been told that they ran 
away, although it was to the discredit of 
somebody that valuable property like this was 
so totally unprotected. 

The British entered the town on the night of 
April 26, and immediately burned one house 
with four persons in it, and on the next day 
set the whole town on fire. They destroyed 
about 5,000 barrels of salted provisions, 1,000 
barrels of flour, 1,600 tents, and a quantity of 
rum, wine, rice, etc. Besides these the esti- 
mated private losses were over $80,000. 

The American and British accounts of this 
conflagration differ only in the use of adverbs. 
The American report says: "The town was 
wantonly burned." The British report says : 
"The town was unavoidably burned." Thus 
we see on what slender threads hangs the 
truth of all history. For the credit of human- 
ity it may be said in corroboration of Gov. 
Tryon's story, that on their march through 
Bethel, where there were no munitions of war, 
private property was unmolested. 

In Danbury almost the only buildings 
spared were the Episcopal church and the tav- 
ern. The former ov/ed its safety to the regard 



PRESENCE OF MIND. 1 37 

of the pious Tryon for the established religion 
of his country, and the latter to the presence 
of mind of Mrs. Taylor, the landlady. When 
the soldiers were about to apply the torch she 
had a large batch of dough ready for the oven. 
" Why, boys, " said the comely matron, placing 
her arms akimbo, and looking smilingly in 
their faces, " I was just going to bake some 
nice biscuits. If you burn the house down, 
you'll lose your breakfasts ; if you don't, you'll 
see what good bread a Yankee woman can 
make ; and I guess I can find some rum to go 
with it. The old man has run away, but I've 
got the key, and I'm no more afraid of you 
than you are afraid of me. Sit down and 
make yourselves comfortable till breakfast is 
ready." The soldiers took her at her word. 
She " kissed them all for their mothers," 
they had a good breakfast, and went on their 
way rejoicing. Taylor's tavern stood for 
many years, a monument of the ready wit of 
Taylor's wife. 

The oven figures once more in the history 
of Danbury. Eli Benedict and Stephen Jarvis 
were the Tory pilots who led the enemy 
into the town. They both " withdrew " to 
Nova Scotia, to await the issue of the war. 



I38 WINTER SKETCHES. 

If the British had been victorious, they might 
have returned to become office-holders, but as 
things turned out it was the part of discretion 
to stay away. Benedict never came home, 
but Jarvis, after many years, had an irrepres- 
sible desire to visit his friends. He came to 
them in disguise, but his presence in the town 
was suspected. The mob came to the house 
of his sister where he was imperfectly con- 
cealed. Again a woman's fertility of resource 
came into play. She pushed her brother into 
the great brick oven, and piling him over with 
kindling-wood, bade the intruders search the 
house ; and they searched it in vain. 

On the first appearance of the British, ex- 
presses were sent to Gens. Arnold and Woos- 
ter at New Haven. They arrived one day too 
late for effective service. If they could in 
season have collected even a few men, they 
might have swept down on their enemies at 
night, when they lay around the smoking 
ruins of the town in the stupor of intoxication. 
They arrived, however, on the next day, and 
dividing their forces, Arnold pushed on ahead 
over the road I had just travelled, to fortify 
a pass against the enemy's approach, while 
Wooster followed in their rear. 



THE AMERICANS DEFEA TED. 1 39 

Without being a military critic, it appears 
to me that Wooster was too precipitate. He 
should have allowed the British to come up 
against Arnold's defences, and thus brought 
them between two fires. Instead of adopting 
such cautious tactics, he pursued them impetu- 
ously, so that, although they were not in a 
fighting mood, but only anxious to secure 
their retreat, they faced about and whipped 
this detachment of the Continentals, mortally 
wounding Gen. Wooster in the engagement. 

Turning about again, they came up with 
Gen. Arnold, whose small force was unable to 
stop them unaided by the assistance that 
Arnold had counted upon, although he and his 
men resisted courageously till all hope was 
lost. The British then made their way 
through Ridgefield to their boats, harassed 
but not seriously impeded by sharpshooters, 
who peppered them as opportunity offered. 

As usual, American and British accounts 
differ enormously as to the number of killed 
and wounded on their respective sides ; but 
the desolation of Danbury bore witness to the 
fact that the object of the raid had been 
accomplished. Gen. Wooster was brought 
back to one of the few houses remaining, and 



140 WINTER SKETCHES. 

died there two or three days after the action. 
The Congress at Philadelphia passed becoming 
resolutions and appropriated a sum of money 
for the erection of a monument to his mem- 
ory. It is an almost incredible story that the 
amount being handed over to the General's 
son, who was authorized to exercise his own 
taste and judgment, he diverted the appropri- 
ation to his own uses, and left his father's 
grave without even a stone to designate its 
. locality. A later generation has been more 
grateful to him than his unnatural offspring, 
and now a handsome monument records the 
heroic self-sacrifice of this intrepid officer. 

It would have been better for the fame of 
Arnold had he, too, met his death upon this 
early battle-field. But he lived to display 
again and again his reckless courage in subse- 
quent contests for liberty. No one can doubt 
that until his fatal step into the abyss of in- 
famy he was actuated by the patriotism as 
much as by the ambition of a soldier. It was 
when the latter was disappointed that the 
former was betrayed. Like Lucifer, he fell 
from the stars, and as Lucifer's good deeds in 
heaven from all eternity are not remembered 
as a balance of account with his transgression, 



DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND. 141 

so all that Benedict Arnold ever did for the 
freedom of his country has been blotted out 
by his futile attempt to accomplish its ruin. 

I sat for hours that evening in his library 
with the editor, who is an encyclopaedia of 
historical knowledge, collating what I have 
written from his store of facts and anecdotes. 
As I was about to leave, he observed, " I am 
afraid you will have a cold ride to-morrow, but 
it is not as cold as it was Sunday morning. 
See that water-color painting? Looks dam- 
aged, don't it? Well, that happened Saturday 
night because there was no fire in the furnace. 
The water in the color froze." When I came 
to know Danbury better on the next day, I 
wondered why the paintings there were not 
done in whiskey : but my suspicions were now 
aroused by this remark of the jocular news- 
paper chief, and I asked, "Mr. Bailey, is this 
all true that you have been telling me?" 

"True as Gospel," he replied, solemnly. 
«Do you believe the Gospel?" I inquired. 
" In the main," responded the editor. " Well, 
then," I answered, "I'll believe this in the 
main, for I know there was a Revolutionary 
war and I think it quite likely there was a fire 
in Danbury, possibly about that time. Good 



142 WINTER SKETCHES. 

night. Many thanks." " Good night, call 
again," and I was out in the street wading 
through the snow to the Wooster House, 
where I turned into a comfortable bed and 
dreamed of British invaders mingled with 
American patriots, and while there was a blaze 
of fire all around, we were sitting in Mrs. Tay- 
lor's kitchen watching her as she baked hot 
rolls for us, the British Generals Agnew and 
Erskine, with Wooster and Arnold, drinking 
healths to each and the other in Jamaica rum. 



CHAPTER IX. 

The Iconoclasts of Danbury and of Boston. — Hat 
Industry. — Storms on Sea and Land. — Ride 
to Mohegan. — Ice-Cutting and " Microbats " 
by the Way. 

On the next morning there was a driving 
snow-storm, but in this compact town it was 
not difficult to get about the streets. Some 
one pointed out the old church, which, as has 
been narrated, the British spared from regard 
to its religious denomination. They were 
more generous than the posterity of its occu- 
pants, who might have been supposed to have 
had sufficient veneration for it to maintain it 
in repair, and to perpetuate it for its original 
purposes. Instead of doing so they have sold 
it with less compunction and excuse than Esau 
had in disposing of his birthright. They were 
more hungry for show than he was for pottage, 
and so, as the building was not adapted to 
modern religious style, they sold it to be 

H3 



144 WINTER SKETCHES. 

moved away and to be occupied as a tenement 
house. 

" I wish," said the late Harvey D. Parker, 
the proprietor of the hotel in Boston that bears 
his name, " they'd pull down that old King's 
Chapel opposite. Such kind of buildings ain't 
no use in these times." And then he turned 
around and viewed complacently the composite 
architecture of his feeding and lodging es- 
tablishment. No one knows how long the 
venerable structure will be spared. Even in 
aesthetic Boston its continued existence is but 
a question of short time. Brattle Street 
church fell at the demand of fashion, and al- 
though the Old South was rescued by private 
subscription from the destruction to which its 
walls had been doomed by greed and religious 
ambition aided by legal chicanery, it has been 
robbed of its sacred character and has become 
a museum of curiosities, while its former oc- 
cupants have taken the many times thirty 
pieces of silver for which it was sold, and 
which it had gained by more than two cen- 
turies of freedom from taxation, and built 
what they call "a magnificent church edifice," 
where it will be of benefit to the real estate 



THE HA T INDUSTR Y. 145 

that they own. The people of Danbury are 
not more iconoclastic than the Bostonians. 

Mr. Hull, a merchant of the town, kindly 
piloted me into one of the large hat factories, 
where some idea might be obtained of the pre- 
vailing local industry. In this one alone 300 
men and women are employed. Altogether, 
out of a population of 18,000, 3,500 men and 
1,500 women are engaged in the various proc- 
esses of making hats, in the twenty-four fac- 
tories. They earn large wages, but the busi- 
ness is not regular and steady. In the latter 
part of the winter, and in early spring, " times 
are lively " in meeting the demand for summer 
fashions, and at the close of summer and the 
commencement of autumn the workmen are 
called upon to prepare for the requirements of 
winter. Six months' work in the year is 
about all that can be counted on. Although 
in " slack times " there is a scattering for a 
while into the country, and into the city of 
New York, there is necessarily a great deal of 
lamentable idleness. But there are always 
bright days for the rumsellers. They " toil 
not, neither do they spin." Others have done 
that for them, and they live much better than 

lilies of the field. In some of the streets al- 
io 



146 WINTER SKETCHES. 

most every other house is a " saloon." In 
White Street, about 300 yards long, there are 
thirty-two of them. These are mostly patron- 
ized by the foreigners. 

In former times the hat-makers were all 
Americans, and as machinery had not been in- 
troduced to any extent, they found an abun- 
dance of work. Even now, when less than half 
are Americans, the country boys and girls 
earn substantial wages, which, to the disgust 
of the saloon-owners, they keep for them- 
selves. Near the factories are rows of sheds. 
Early in the morning caravans of wagons or 
sleighs may be seen coming into town, each 
vehicle carrying, besides its passengers, a 
bundle of hay. They drive to the sheds, 
where the animals are left to feed till evening, 
the boys and girls taking their dinner-pails 
along to their places of work. The days are 
long, for " piece-work " is indifferent to eight- 
hour rules. The busy employes reserve only 
light enough to find their way home, and 
at twilight they take up their line of march. 

It seems to me that honest, industrious per- 
sons like these should have some very fixed 
and correct ideas upon " the protection of 
American labor." It may be supposed that 



" PROTECTION OF AMERICAN LABOR." I47 

they would look askance on the introduction 
of so much machinery, although they know it 
is unavoidable, and now that they see half of 
the remaining work, the whole of which was 
once their own, being done by imported labor- 
ers, they should ask themselves, " What is 
the meaning of the hackneyed phrase? Is pro- 
tection of machinery and of foreigners a pro- 
tection of American labor, or is it the protection 
of men who employ machinery, Americans, 
foreigners, horses, mules, as they can best em- 
ploy anything and everything for their greatest 
advantage ? " 

Hats of all kinds have been made at Dan- 
bury. Just now, as the Derby hat is almost 
universally worn, the stock and machinery are 
adapted to its manufacture. If the "stove- 
pipe " ever again gets the ascendency, new 
methods will doubtless be devised. On enter- 
ing the factory we were shown first the ma- 
terial out of which the hats are made. This 
is mostly rabbit fur, and singularly the article 
is chiefly imported, the greater part of the sup- 
ply coming from Germany. One would sup- 
pose the rabbit industry to be indigenous, and 
whatever protection sheep wool might require, 
rabbit wool would need none. But the duty 



148 WINTER SKETCHES. 

on hatters ' furs of twenty per cent, is often 
escaped by importing the free skins and strip- 
ping them here. I wonder if the Australians, 
know anything about Danbury and Derby 
hats ? Rabbits are overrunning their country 
and devouring their substance. Why not trap 
a few millions of them, kill them, and send 
their skins to Danbury? 

First we were shown cases of boxes, in each 
division of which from 2^ to 4 ounces of fur 
had been carefuly weighed out according to 
the weight of the hats intended to be made. 

This is soaked and steamed in rooms of a 
temperature like that of a Russian bath, until 
it becomes pulp. Then it is spread with al- 
most transparent thinness over a cone three 
feet high and a foot in diameter. Next it is 
shrunk and partially dried. By and by, after 
being dyed, it comes down to the size of an or- 
dinary hat when it is blocked. Now it would 
answer for a " wide awake," but it must be stif- 
fened with gum shellac and the edges curled. 
Thus far all this heavy and dirty labor has 
been done by men, each one having his piece- 
work. At this stage it is turned over to the 
deft manipulation of the women, who bind, 
stitch, line, and pack. Then the carpenter 



CAPITAL AND LABOR. 149 

comes and nails up the cases, and the hats are 
ready for shipment. I have enumerated only 
a few of the more than twenty processes of 
hat-making, each of which is the piece-work of 
separate individuals — all " parts of one stu- 
pendous whole." I don't know if that phrase 
is exactly applicable to a man's hat. It cer- 
tainly is to that of a woman as regarded be- 
tween ourselves and the foot-lights. 

The relations between the factory-owners 
and their employes just now are amicable, but 
as among the great European Powers, war is 
not unlikely to break out at any moment. 
The workmen are masters of the situation. 
They know, as well as their employers know, to 
a penny what it costs to make a hat and what 
price hats command in the market. It is not 
the employer who fixes the wages of the em- 
ployed, but it is the employed who figures out 
exactly how much the employer shall be per- 
mitted to make. The* employes are all union 
men, and they will not allow a single non-un- 
ionist to work, nor will they permit any boy 
under seventeen, or man over twenty-one years 
of age to learn the trade. At present they are 
earning from three to five dollars per day, ac- 
cording to their capacity. That gives the 



I 5 O WIN TER SKE TCHES. 

men who employ them a fair margin of profit. 
If the market should advance, the workmen 
will doubtless demand more, and if it should 
recede, I think they are sensible enough to be 
willing to take less rather than be idle. Dan- 
bury appears to have solved the great question 
of capital and labor. 

Every old sailor knows that a southeasterly 
gale is most likely to expend its fury and to be 
succeeded by a brisk nor'wester either at eight 
o'clock in the evening, at midnight, or at noon. 
When coming on to the coast, appearances are 
closely watched at these hours. If there 
should be a sudden lull, then is the time with- 
out a moment's delay to haul up the courses 
and to stand by the braces. In an instant the 
head sails are taken aback, and a lively crew 
will swing around the after yards. The main- 
topsail fills, and as the ship's head pays off, the 
head yards in their turn are swung, and the 
ship lies close to the wind, which comes rush- 
ing back from the cold north-west. " 

When this change occurs at noon, there can- 
not be anything more grand and beautiful than 
the scene. The clouds of snow or rain that had 
been driving everything before them in their 
fury, are driven back upon themselves and 



A NOR' WESTER, I 5 I 

piled together over the eastern horizon by the 
young giant that has come out of the north 
scattering them with the breath of his nostrils. 
Every moment, his fury increases. After the 
southeaster has succumbed, its waves for a 
time keep up the uneven contest until the 
nor'wester brings into action the waves that 
he has created, and which increase under his 
lash. These strike the old seas and topple 
them up on end, sending the spray of the com- 
bat high in the air, little rainbows playing 
through their crests. At last the old leaden 
colored seas subside and the blue waters roll on 
in their beauty and majesty. The ship that 
had been tossed about in the conflict, opposing 
surges meeting and tumbling in upon her 
decks, is now snugly hove to, riding the billows 
like an albatross, and sailors, disappointed as 
they may be at the loss of their fair wind, are 
never so insensible that they cannot enjoy the 
magnificence of this great picture of sky and 
sea. 

There is nothing comparable to it on the 
land. There are the same clouds, storms, and 
sunshine, the same poetry of motion overhead, 
but no motion of the stolid mountains that 
stand still in their everlasting ranges, fixed 



I 5 2 WINTER SKE TCHES. 

there by the Power that gives to the mountain 
waves their ceaseless moving energy of life. 
And yet, if we cannot have the sea all the 
time, let us be grateful for what the land affords 
that is beautiful, if not so grand. The snow 
cannot lie and sparkle on the breast of the 
ocean, and there are no silver forests there — no, 
nor sleigh-bells, toboggan-slides, and skating- 
ponds, but, taking it all in all, leaving the 
waves out of the account, could there be any- 
thing more superb than the breaking of the 
storm that day at Danbury ? 

True to its propensity, this came about 
precisely at noon, and the north-west wind 
succeeded. As Fanny and I left the town at 
one o'clock, the sleigh tracks were covered with 
a dry powdered snow, which here and there 
was whirled up against the fences, arching itself 
over them in drifts and festoons. Everything 
looked so white, so pure, so clean, as if there 
could never be a thaw, when the roads would 
become dirty brown, then black bate ground, 
the barn-yards reservoirs of filth, the fences 
naked and wet, and there would be "water, 
water everywhere." I did not think of that at 
the time. 

There are many persons who would not have 



FANNY. I 5 3 

enjoyed the present surroundings so much — the 
same sort of people who in health are always 
on the lookout for sickness, and who seem to be 
afraid to live because at some time or another 
they will die. There is where a horse generally 
has the advantage over a man. Horses probably 
have no idea of death. It might be a satisfaction 
to car horses if they had, but I do not think it 
would be a pleasant thought for Fanny. She 
gets her oats regularly, and, though the time 
may come when the oats are musty or are not, 
she doesn't trouble herself with anticipating 
evil. Let us all try to imitate her. She was 
in remarkably good spirits to-day. Facing the 
wind, the steam from her nostrils blowing back 
upon her face, she was a pretty and unique 
picture, with her bay body and legs and her 
silver-gray head. Sometimes a little stray 
forgotten snow-cloud would come travelling 
back from the west on its airy journey to over- 
take the storm that had left it behind. And 
then for a while we were all white till the wind 
had blown off the flakes. So cheerily we made 
our way along through Brewster's and Carmel 
until we came to Lake Mahopac. 

Sad was the appearance of its great summer 
hotels, with their closed shutters and barricaded 



I 5 4 WINTER SKE TCHES. 

doors, huge snowdrifts piled upon the piazzas, 
the abandoned photograph shanties, and the 
boat-houses with their signs still displayed, 
" Boats to let " — boats to let, with ice eighteen 
inches thick, and a thickness of eighteen inches 
of snow over the ice. 

But there was no lack of activity on the lake. 
Gangs of men were busily employed in filling 
the two great ice-houses, which hold 60,000 
tons. Canals, nearly a quarter of a mile long, 
had been cut out into deep water so that the 
purest ice might be obtained. The great cakes 
were pushed along by men until they reached 
the shore, when a sort of steam tread-mill ap- 
paratus seized them and jerked them up to a 
high platform, from whence they slid down to 
lie side by side or one above the other in a 
compact mass until they were wanted for re- 
frigerators, fever hospitals, ice-creams, mint 
juleps, and the thousand uses to which ice is 
put in summer, the most common and the 
worst of which is that of ruining the digestion 
of persons who drink ice-water with their meals. 

There was not always such a craze for ice- 
water in this country. It has not yet invaded 
Europe. Doubtless it was to Mr. Breslin one 
of the most objectionable practices of the 



"MICROBATS." 155 

London hotels that they do not serve goblets 
of this pernicious drink to their guests. I 
remember reading in an old magazine — I think 
of about 1802 — an account of the tubing from 
a very cold spring near the "city prison" in 
New York, and it was mentioned as an especial 
advantage for those who lived at a considerable 
distance, that as the water had so far to run in 
the logs, " it lost somewhat of its coldness as 
when first taken from the spring." 

I stopped to talk with a man who appeared 
to be directing some others at the lake, and 
congratulated him on the successful harvest of 
the crop. "'Jes' so, jes' so," he said. "Well, 
yes, it will be a big thing this year — our folks 
can get any price they want." 

" How is that?" I asked. 

" Why, on account of them microbats in the 
North River ice. It's all pizen, and nobody 
will use it. Ours hasn't got any of 'em in it." 

" Well, what's the matter with the North 
River ice ? " 

" Microbats, didn't I tell you ! You get a 
microscope and examine a drop of that water: 
there's ten million microbats in it, and every 
one of 'em is a snake. They lay so clost to- 
gether that they keep 'emselves warm, and 



156 WINTER SKETCHES. 

don't freeze when the water freezes solid. 
Then when the ice thaws out, there they be. 
Folks that drink that kind of ice-water get 
typhoid fever, malaria, measles, and small-pox, 
to say nothin' of having live critters crawlin' 
round inside of 'em." 

" But how would they work in whiskey ? " I 
suggested. " Wouldn't that kill them ? " 

"Now, that's something I hadn't thought 
of," replied the ice man. " Perhaps it might." 

" Well, then," I replied, as I touched Fanny 
lightly with the spur, " New Yorkers, on the 
whole, may consider themselves safe." 

Nine miles more to Mohegan, arriving at 
our old quarters there at five o'clock. 

''Delightful ride, wasn't it, Fanny? I hope 
you are not tired ?" 

" Not a bit of it. Where are we going 
next ? " 

" I can't say just now. Here, take this lump 
of sugar, give me your paw, and trot off to your 
stable." 



CHAPTER XI. 

The West Side of the Hudson. — The Discov- 
erers Dream. — Revolutionary Memories. — 
On Andrews Track. — Over the Ice-Bridge. — 
Fanny s Misgivings. 

Frequently passing up and down the 
eastern bank of the Hudson River, whether by 
rail or over the highway, the steep Palisades 
and the range of which they form a part, 
stretching far north to the higher Kaaterskills 
on the western side, in their varied dresses of 
the seasons, changing from green to russet- 
gray, and then to the silver of the frozen tor- 
rents or the dazzling white of midwinter, are 
ever-present pictures of scenery which famili- 
arity cannot render tame or uninteresting. 
They seem to have been built up to hide some- 
thing beyond and to excite our imagination 
with conjectures of what it may be. As Irving 
looked upon them from the porch of Sunnyside, 
he peopled them with the beings of his own 

157 



1 5 8 WINTER SKE TCHES. 

fancy, turning loose his hobgoblins to disport 
themselves with a mortal who dared to trust 
himself in their wild recesses. Familiar as he 
was with that little strip of New York, which, 
to look at it on the map, would seem to belong 
of right to New England, and of which he 
could speak with accuracy, as he did in his 
" Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he was obliged to 
confine himself to imagination in his descrip- 
tion of the terra incognita that he dared not 
to cross the river to survey. 

There must have always been something 
forbidding about that western shore, for when 
Hendrik Hudson anchored in the river on the 
nth of September, in the year 1609, he made 
no attempt to land upon it, but pulled away to 
an island on the other side, armed with a 
demijohn of gin, with which he attacked and 
subdued the natives, who, not having had any 
name for the spot, called it Manhattan — the 
place of drunkenness — in honor of the occa- 
sion ; and the name is still appropriately re- 
tained. In this first encounter with the abo- 
rigines, the harder and more accustomed 
head of the explorer stood him in good 
stead, although his share of the fire-water 



THE DISCOVERER'S DREAM. I 59 

may, perhaps, account for his prophetic dream 
of the night. 

The southern breeze had died away, 

The ebbing tide to seaward ran ; 
It was the twilight hour of day, 

E'er night her starry reign began. 

Hendrik had dropped his anchor there, 

Beneath the bristling Palisade, 
When sunset streamed its golden hair, 

On Nature's face in slumber laid. 

And as he paced the decks alone, 

Fond memory brightened into hope ; 

The past was his, and the unknown 
Was in the future's horoscope. 

He stopped, and gazing at the view, 
Sat leaning o'er the galliot's side, 

And saw the Indians' li^ht canoe 
Dance o'er the sparkling starlit tide. 

The music of the parted stream, 
The wafted land-breeze vesper sigh, 

Stole o'er his senses, and his dream 
Encouraged by the lullaby 



1 6o WINTER SKE TCHES. 

He thought he saw the small canoe 
Grow big, and bigger — bigger yet, 

Then changing into something new, 
It was a sloop with mainsail set. 

And then this white bird had her young, 
They grew like her, and clustered 'round, 

And " Yo heave ho " was cheerTy sung 
As sloops were up and downward bound. 

And still they grew, as Fashion's dames 
Increase in flounce and furbelow; 

Brigs, ships, and craft of various names 

Float 'round the anchored Dutchman's bow, 

'Twas nothing strange, he'd seen them oft, 
Perhaps less jaunty, snug and trim ; 

But then those flags he saw aloft, 

Those stars and stripes, were new to him. 

But now he sees, or thinks he sees, 

A mill afloat, with water wheels 
Revolving, coming near! His knees 

Shake with the fear that o'er him steals. 

It thunders on with furious blast ; 

It is the devil's ship of fire ; 
Like lightning sweeps the phantom past 

On bickering wheels that never tire. 



THE PALISADES. l6l 

Then underneath the lurid light 
She leaves above her foamy track, 

Upsprings to his astonished sight 
A city on Manhattan's back. 

'Tis pandemonium ! Demons scream 
Through thousand whistles in his ear, 

And fiends on iron horses seem 
To shoot along their mad career ! 

Through the still air, the midnight bell 

Sent out the music of its stroke ; 
The anchor watch sang out, " All's well," 

And Hendrik from his dream awoke. 

To-day the crests of the Palisades are 
densely wooded as they were two hundred 
and seventy-nine years ago, and it is not till 
the traveller has progressed some twenty miles 
to the north that, looking across, he sees scat- 
tered houses, towns, and village cities that 
have crept down and established themselves 
on the waterside. People of the eastern shore 
do not care to have any intercourse with them. 
Before the Revolutionary war there was Dobbs 
Ferry above Yonkers, and King's Ferry above 
Sing Sing, but latterly there has been no cross- 
11 



1 62 WINTER SKETCHES. 

ing-place below West Point excepting between 
Tarrytown and Nyack, and the ferry-boat 
which did that service having been burned, it 
has not been thought worth while to replace 
her. 

About the line between New York and New 
Jersey over there, there are curious old Dutch 
settlements, and there are Revolutionary leg- 
ends of battles and of the rank treason hatched 
upon their shores. I have always desired to 
tread upon their ground. 

An opportunity was offered by the building 
of the great natural bridge which this year has 
stretched across the Hudson from its source 
far down to within fifteen miles of New York. 
How well the Ice King does his architectural 
work ! First he fringes the shores and spreads 
his glassy outworks towards the channel; it 
is a long time before they meet, but when 
they touch and come together, the building 
goes rapidly on, the substrata thicken inch by 
inch until what seems to be the maximum of 
two feet is gained. 

In the last winter Fanny and I had gone 
over the road travelled by the hapless Andre 
from his landing on the eastern shore until he 
was captured at Tarrytown, and his subsequent 



A COLD MORNING. 1 63 

fortunes were traced as he was led from place 
to place, a prisoner. I now proposed to avail 
ourselves of the chance offered by the closing 
of the river, to cross it as near as might be, in 
an opposite direction, on the route of the old 
ferry which served Andre's purpose, for it is 
not true, as is generally supposed, that he was 
brought over by a row-boat in the darkness, 
being supplied with a horse after landing. 

It was very cold on the morning of the 16th 
of February. The mercury at eight o'clock 
stood at five degrees below zero, but the air 
was perfectly still, so that at ten, when the 
glass indicated zero, the lack of wind aided by 
the sun-warmth already appreciable in the 
advance of the season, rendered riding not 
only far from uncomfortable, but gave it a 
zest and enjoyment not to be attained under 
any other conditions. 

Leaving Lake Mohegan we pursued our 
noiseless way over the well-beaten sleigh 
tracks, down through the village of Peekskill, 
meeting here and there a muffled pedestrian. 
Most of the people were occupied in the many 
stove foundries which contribute to its princi- 
pal industry. On a day like this they might 
well make themselves comfortable about their 



164 WINTER SKETCHES. 

stoves, and wish, for the success of their busi- 
ness, that all the days of the year might be 
like unto it. 

I once asked a stove manufacturer why he 
was a protectionist, and why he so cheerfully 
submitted to a heavy duty on the iron that 
he worked. " Oh, well," said the manufacturer, 
whose house had just divided the year's profit 
of $48,000, " we can stand it ; we get enough 
out of the public, and so we can afford to let 
the pig-iron men get something out of us." 
I did not propose just now to leave Fanny out 
in the cold while I went into his office to argue 
the question with him. She might have stood 
there till this time, and my friend would not 
have satisfied me that any reduction of the 
duty on pig-iron would infallibly reduce his 
own profits and the wages of his men. 

Verplanck's Point, where it projects into the 
Hudson, is four miles below Peekskill, almost 
directly opposite Stony Point upon the other 
side. The British held these cdmmanding 
positions, which gave them control of th e 
river. Later in the war they were abandoned, 
and the Americans extended their lines nomi- 
nally to the vicinity of Tarrytown : although 
the intervening ten or fifteen miles were at 



STONY POINT. 165 

times included in that debatable terriority in- 
fested by Cowboys and Skinners, and known 
as the " neutral ground." 

The fortress on Stony Point was captured 
in July, 1779, by Gen. Wayne, with the aid 
of the first " intelligent contraband " on rec- 
ord. Old Pomp had supplied the British gar- 
rison with strawberries, and in the routine of 
his business he became possessed of the coun- 
tersign. The primary attack of the Americans 
was upon Pompey's cabin, where he was cap- 
tured and subdued with little difficulty. At 
first he refused to betray his customers, but 
by dint of promises of many chickens and 
threats of disabling his shins, he was induced 
to lead the Continentals into the stronghold. 
Wayne advanced by the side of Pompey at 
the head of his troops under cover of darkness, 
and after a hand-to-hand bayonet fight, with- 
out firing a single gun, they subdued the 
garrison and took 543 prisoners. In the end, 
after being evacuated and again occupied by 
the British, the forts on both sides of the river 
were abandoned and dismantled, the King's 
Ferry being continued between the points. 

Fanny and I approached the river at the 
spot in Verplanck's where Andre" landed under 



1 66 WINTER SKETCHES. 

the guidance of Joshua Hett Smith, who fig- 
ured conspicuously in the treason, and to 
whose connection with it I shall give a prom- 
inent place in this narrative, because his name 
has not always been brought forward with 
those of his principals. The river, frozen with 
a thickness of nearly two feet, was still further 
covered by a foot of snow. Far as the eye 
could reach to the Highlands of the north, 
and beyond the wide Tappaan Zee at the 
South, it was all an unbroken prairie of white. 
We might have crossed in the exact track 
of Andre" and Smith to Stony Point, a dis- 
tance of about a mile, but by taking a diag- 
onal course of four miles to Haverstraw there 
was a saving of time. To all appearance 
a great field lay before us. Why should 
Fanny suppose it to be anything else ? She 
had never been there before. Why should 
she know that beneath that fair covering of 
snow there was a layer of ice, and that beneath 
the ice there was water enough to drown a 
thousand regiments of cavalry ? There was 
not the slightest difference in the look of the 
snow upon the river and upon the land over 
which we came to it. Nevertheless, she was 
so reluctant to follow the foot-tracks that I 



FAN NTS MISGIVINGS. 1 67 

was obliged to dismount and give her a " stern 
board." Even then, when once upon the river, 
she trembled excessively, and looking into her 
eye I could see the thought in her brain, and 
knew that if she could speak she would say : 
" I have every confidence in you, but I am a 
female and you must make allowance for me. 
You say the ice is two feet thick ; but I might 
break in. Can't we go around by the bridge 
at Albany or the ferry at New York? No? 
' Come on, Fanny, is it ? ' That's all well 
enough for you. You say you will lead me 
till I gain more confidence ; but these are 
tracks of men. Horses weigh a great deal 
more than men, and I don't see a single horse- 
track on the snow ! " Caresses and sugar, 
however, had some effect, but she stepped tim- 
idly and gingerly along until we came to the 
well marked sleigh-track. All at once her fears 
vanished as she trod it with a firm step, and 
permitting me to mount her, she loped over 
the frozen river as if it had been a highway 
upon the land. Animal instinct, was it ? No; 
it was thought, reflection, calculation, like that 
of a man, without his knowledge of safety — 
nervousness, fear, distrust, like that of a 



1 68 WINTER SKETCHES. 

woman, which refuses to be overcome by 
reason. 

So we went on confidently and satisfactorily 
until suddenly there came one of those, to the 
inexperienced, fearful ice-quakes, giving the 
impression that our weight was cracking and 
breaking down the great winter-bridge through 
all its length and breadth, and that we were 
about to sink into the depths below. The hills 
on either side took up the echo, and poor 
Fanny thought that her last moment had 
come, and that she was about to expire in a 
convulsion of nature. She stood still and 
trembled from head to foot. Cold as it was, 
the sweat broke out upon her, and with it the 
hair on her skin literally stood on end. I 
never so pitied a dumbthinking beast. Dis- 
mounting, I put my arm around her neck, 
drew her head down to my breast, patted her 
face, and kissed her cheek, yes, I did, and I 
walked by her side comforting her as best I 
could for the rest of the way, as 'again and 
again the fearful, though harmless, crashes re- 
verberated from shore to shore. For her sake, 
I was glad when we landed at Haverstraw. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The " Smith House" at Haver straw. — A Revo- 
lutionary Copperhead. — The Landing from 
the " Vulture." — Two Fateful Musket Shots. 
— The Cider -Mill Engagement. — Smith's 
Misadventure. 

I HAD a letter of introduction to Mr. Lil- 
burn, who, I had been told, had lived in the 
" Smith house " for many years, and who now 
resided in the new house that he had built 
near by. We had crossed the river, landing 
two miles below the place, but Fanny was so 
overjoyed at being on terra firma again, that 
she skipped nimbly over the road to find an 
entertainment as agreeable to her in Mr. Lil- 
burn's stable, as was provided for me at his 
hospitable board. 

The events of the Arnold treason are nar- 
rated in books of history, and are often re- 
peated in magazines and newspapers. Never- 

169 



\yO WINTER SKETCHES. 

theless, there are items to be gathered on the 
spot, brought down by tradition, seasoned per- 
haps with romance, but having for their stock 
the meat of truth. 

After dinner, my obliging host accompanied 
me to the historic house, where we were po- 
litely received by Mr. and Mrs. Weiant, the 
present occupants. It cannot be agreeable to 
the privacy of family life to dwell in a " show 
place." No one would care to live in Shaks- 
pere's home, or at Mount Vernon, if they could 
be had house-rent free. But these kind people 
declare that they are not disturbed by their 
frequent visitors, who are always made wel- 
come to explore the premises. 

The house was built 140 years ago. It is 
one of those old-fashioned structures whose 
builders studied architectural comfort rather 
than architectural monstrosities of " kitty-cor- 
nered " roofs, mediaeval turrets, and all sorts of 
composite irregularities that are laid to the 
charge of good Queen Anne. On each side of 
the wide hall, with its ample staircase, are two 
large square rooms, duplicated by similar 
chambers overhead. The first chamber in the 
south-east corner is the one where Arnold and 
Andre" were closeted and where the plans of 



A REVOLUTIONARY COPPERHEAD. I J I 

West Point were delivered. A part of the 
original furniture is still there. A little secret 
closet is pointed out where Andre was said to 
have been concealed ; but this is one of the 
absurd traditions which, I believe, Lossing has 
adopted as authentic without reflection. 
There can be no foundation for it whatever, as 
there was no pretence of secrecy in his visit 
to the house. 

Mr. Smith was a gentleman of high social 
standing and wealth, but his great mistake lay- 
in his abortive attempt to sit comfortably on 
two stools, which finally brought him ignomin- 
iously to the floor. He was a sort of Revolu- 
tionary Copperhead. As he intimates in his 
little book, copies of which are very rare (but 
one of them is in the possession of Mr. Lil- 
burn), published in England and reprinted in 
America after the war, he was a Tory. 

In those days there were Tories of two 
classes. The out-and-out Tory was one who 
stood by the King through thick and thin, op- 
posing the war as unjustifiable from the begin- 
ning, and maintaining his allegiance squarely 
by taking up arms in the cause of his sovereign. 
The other was the man who acknowledged the 
grievances of the colonies, but was opposed 



172 WINTER SKETCHES. 

to their separation from the mother country. 
When England, alarmed at the negotiations 
which resulted in the alliance with France, 
manifested a willingness to accede to the 
original demands of the colonies, the Tories of 
this stamp supposed that all the objects of the 
war might be accomplished, and therefore ob- 
jected to its continuance for the sake of a dis- 
tinct government, which they conceived would 
be for the interest of military and political 
agitators, among whom they classed Washing- 
ton himself. 

It may be added that there was still a third 
class who, like the old woman whose husband 
was fighting with the bear, " didn't care which 
whipped," so that she was not disturbed. All 
that they were anxious about was the safety of 
their own lives and property. For the first 
class we may well entertain a sincere respect. 
Certainly our Republican friends, who consider 
taxation for the benefit of the few to be an 
advantage to the whole community," will agree 
with them that it was a wicked thing for any- 
body to war against the King of England be- 
cause he endeavored to collect a small duty on 
tea ; and all of us are willing to accord to sin- 



SMITHS CHARACTER. 1 73 

cerity in error something of the credit due to 
principle. 

In his treatise, Mr. Joshua Hett Smith de- 
clares that he was on the American side, al- 
though he thought the war had gone far 
enough, while facts show that he was not only 
destitute of all patriotism, but was supremely 
selfish, and what was infinitely worse, he con- 
nived at the betrayal of his country. 

To all indications, when the British lines 
extended above Haverstraw, he was a loyal 
subject of the king; but when his property 
came within the American lines, he lavishly 
extended his hospitalities to the Continental 
officers. Arnold and Burr were frequently his 
guests, and the latter left his name carved in 
the marble of the dining-room mantelpiece, 
where it is shown as one of the curiosities of 
the house. 

In his book, Smith complains that he was 
not taken into Arnold's confidence, regretting 
that he was therefore unable to defeat his 
plans, while he unconsciously makes it evident 
that he knew perfectly well the object of 
Andre's visit, assisting in his disguise by lend- 
ing him his own coat. It was this reluctant 
exchange of his uniform which settled the 



174 WINTER SKETCHES. 

British officer's doom as a spy, and Smith, 
together with Arnold who proposed it, were 
responsible for his fate. It is curious to no- 
tice how the case was regarded by some jour- 
nals in England. The (London) Political 
Magazine of February, 1781, says of it: 
" Washington has tried Smith for being in 
what they call Arnold's conspiracy ; but the 
trial has turned out a mere farce, for Smith 
has not suffered any punishment. The people 
in New York therefore believe that Smith be- 
trayed Andre to the rebels, and are of opinion 
that he never can clear up his character any- 
where but at the gallows ! " Truly the way of 
the transgressor is hard. If Washington could 
have convicted him, he would have hanged 
him, and if the editor of the Political Magazine 
had gotten him in his power, he would have 
had him hanged again. He escaped the first 
execution before his trial was concluded, by 
disguising himself in women's clothes and get- 
ting down to New York, where fortunately for 
him, Sir Henry Clinton did not take the edito- 
rial view of his case. 

The Vulture had anchored off Croton Point, 
not far below Haverstraw, and Arnold at 
Smith's house had furnished him with a flag of 



ANDR& AND ARNOLD. I 75 

truce to communicate with her. It was rather 
odd that a boat carrying such a flag should 
have approached the ship with muffled oars by 
night, and it is not surprising that the bearer 
met with a rough reception from the officer of 
the deck. It was with difficulty that he gained 
admittance to Capt. Southerland's cabin, and 
presented his credentials. Maj. Andre, under 
the name of John Anderson, then accompanied 
him to the shore, where they landed just below 
Haverstraw, and found Arnold concealed in 
the bushes, while a servant was in charge of 
two horses. Here was the first conference, in 
which Smith complains that he was not al- 
lowed to participate. It was prolonged till 
daylight when, the tide not serving for An- 
dre's return to the ship, he and Arnold mount- 
ed the horses and rode through the town to 
Smith's house, while the latter pulled around 
with the boat's crew to an upper landing, with 
the intention of rowing Andre down to the 
Vulture on the turn of the tide. 

In the meantime important events were oc. 
curring on the opposite shore, small in their 
beginning, but of infinite importance in results. 
But for them Andre would have effected his 
escape safely, Arnold's plans would have ma- 



i;6 WINTER SKETCHES. 

tured, West Point would have fallen, British 
communication with Canada would have been 
opened, the war would have been brought to a 
close, and these United States might have re- 
mained till this day the colonies of Great Brit- 
ain. All this was prevented by two musket 
shots fired from a cider-mill. 

On the morning of September 22, Moses 
Sherwood and Jack Peterson, a mulatto who 
afterwards enlisted in the army and received a 
pension for his services, were working their 
cider-press at Croton Point, on the farm which 
of late has been known as Underbill's vineyard. 
As was customary in those stirring days, the 
men carried with them their muskets to their 
places of work or of worship. These two had 
watched the movements of the English man- 
o'-war with suspicion, wondering what her 
errand could be, so far from her usual anchor- 
age. 

Their suspicions were increased when they 
saw a boat put off from the Vulttfre, possibly 
with the purpose of communicating with the 
western shore to discover the cause of Maj. 
Andre's delay. Each took up his musket, and 
one after the other fired upon the boat, the 
last shot splintering an oar, and causing an im- 



A SPIRITED ENGAGEMENT. \JJ 

mediate return to the ship, which forthwith 
entered into a spirited engagement with the 
cider-mill. The noise brought all the neigh- 
boring farmers to the spot, and as fortunately 
there was a twelve-pounder field-piece at hand, 
it was brought into requisition. They dragged 
it down to the end of the point and directed it 
over a bank of natural earthworks against the 
Vulture. She replied with round shot, one of 
which lodged in an oak tree. When the tree 
fell from decay not many years ago, the ball 
was extracted, and is now one of the many 
curiosities gathered by Dr. Coutant at Tarry- 
town. The farmers made it too hot for the 
sloop of war, and she accordingly dropped 
down the river, out of range. 

The conspirators at Haverstraw had wit- 
nessed the action, and, as may be imagined, 
were chagrined at its consequences. Smith 
himself was too badly frightened to undertake 
the return of Andre by passing the battery 
and running the risk of being overhauled by 
patrol boats, and as Arnold was unaccountably 
unwilling to provide another flag of truce, the 
boat's crew became suspicious and absolutely 
refused to go upon the errand. Arnold ac- 
cordingly departed for his quarters, after pro- 

12 



178 WINTER SKETCHES. 

viding Smith and Andre each with a pass, and 
instructing the former to escort the latter to 
a place of safety, whence he might find his 
way to New York. 

Dr. Coutant has the facsimile of Andre's 
pass from Arnold. It is written with a steady 
hand on a bit of paper about the size of a half 
page of a note sheet. Late in the afternoon 
Smith and Andre" mounted the two saddle- 
horses that had been used in the morning, and 
rode three or four miles up the river to the 
ferry at Stony Point. The horses were taken 
across with them in the scow which served for 
the King's Ferry transit. Thus the landing 
at Verplanck's Point was effected, but as 
yet the spy and the traitor did not feel at 
ease. 

Smith was a good pilot. After finding com- 
fortable lodgings at the house of McKoy, a 
Tory Scotchman, on the Yorktown road which 
was taken in order to avoid the American 
militia scattered along the river 'bank, they 
went on in the morning to Pine's Bridge, 
where they parted, Smith directing Andre to 
take the road through to White Plains, and 
thus avoid the river altogether. Last winter 
Fanny and I traced them along this road and 



AN IMPUDENT SCOUNDREL. \ Jg 

came to the corner below Pine's Bridge, where 
Andre, left to his own resources, made his mis- 
take of turning to the right in the direction of 
the Hudson. Smith pursued his route, not 
homewards, but towards Fishkill, where his 
wife happened to be, congratulating himself 
on his perfect safety after so many hairbreadth 
escapes, for they had twice been called upon 
to show their passes on the road, and once 
narrowly escaped detection. He jogged along 
comfortably and arrived at Fishkill in due 
time. 

But he was a greatly astonished man, when, 
after the conscientious discharge of his patri- 
otic duties, sleeping by the side of the partner 
of his previous joys and future sorrows, he was 
roughly dragged from his bed and taken down 
to Washington's headquarters, at what is now 
Garrison's Landing. He could not under- 
stand it at all. But he was soon brought to 
" a realizing sense of his lost condition." 

I wonder that no historic painter has por- 
trayed that meeting of Washington and Josh- 
ua Hett Smith. Smith coolly asked the Gen- 
eral why he desired to see him, and why the 
invitation to his presence had been so rude 
and abrupt. He had not long to wait for the 



ISO WINTER SKETCHES. 

answer. " Sir ! Do you know that Arnold 
has fled, and that Mr. Anderson, whom you 
have piloted through our lines, proves to be 
Maj. John Andre, the Adjutant-General of the 
British Army, now our prisoner? I expect 
him here under a guard of one hundred horse, 
to meet his fate as a spy, and unless you con- 
fess who were your accomplices, I shall sus- 
pend you both on yonder tree before the 
door!" 

Even then, Smith's audacity did not forsake 
him. He says that he undertook to " argue 
the question " with Washington, informing 
him that he was exceeding the limits of his 
authority, and that he should demand a trial 
before the civil court, for he was not under his 
command in the army. " Whereupon," he 
adds, " the General was irritated and ordered 
the guards to take me away." It is said that 
on rare occasions the Father of his Country 
supplemented his discourse with expletives. 
If ever they were justifiable, the Occasion for 
them was when this impudent scoundrel was 
before him. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The First Battle in American Naval History. 
— Over the West Shore Ridges. — The Old 
Village of Tappan. — Andre" Memories and 
Relics. 

I LEFT my kind-hearted host, Mr. Lilburn, 
returning many thanks for his hospitality, for 
the information imparted by the documents 
in his library, and the supply of traditionary 
lore at his command. Fanny, too, was re- 
freshed, for the oats served out to her were 
not musty, like the papers I had feasted upon. 
Evening was drawing on, and we had a ride 
of twenty miles before us to Piermont, where 
I proposed to pass the night with a friend, one 
of those sensible men who believe that the 
city is the place for business, and the country 
is the place for home where clubs, theatres, 
and the demands of society add not to the 
toil of the counting-room, thus making life an 
ever revolving tread-mill, on which rest is 

never found. 

181 



1 82 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Riding again through the town of Haver- 
straw, and following for a few miles further 
along the bank of the river, I think of more 
Revolutionary incidents than I have space to 
chronicle. All the way from Nyack to Haver- 
straw, wherever a landing could be found, 
the British made their incessant raids. Had 
the people been united, few and scattered as 
they were, these incursions would have been 
of less account. In our late sectional war 
we were geographically divided, and for the 
most part States were open adversaries of 
States, but in that of the old days no man 
could tell if his next-door neighbor was his 
friend or his enemy. 

Far greater atrocities were perpetrated by 
Tory townsmen on the patriots among whom 
they dwelt, with whom they professed friend- 
ship and worshipped God, than by the invad- 
ing British troops. It is not surprising that 
when the war was over, the property of the 
Tories was confiscated, and they themselves 
were driven into exile. In the ancient local 
histories we read of assassinations and brutali- 
ties almost incredible, occurring in this region 
of the country settled by quiet Dutchmen, 
surpassing in enormity anything of their na- 



FIRST NA VAL BA TTLE. 1 8 3 

ture in all other parts of the land. From the 
Ramapo Valley to the shores of the Hud- 
son there were constant successions of mur- 
der, rape, and arson. Patrols were always on 
guard to prevent the landing of the British, 
not so much from fear of them as from the 
apprehension that their own townsmen would 
be encouraged by their presence to cut their 
throats. 

Exasperated by these frequent occurrences, 
they organized an impromptu fleet for the 
purpose of attack upon the water. Although 
it does not come within the scope of the great 
works on American naval history to chronicle 
it, nevertheless the first naval battle after the 
Declaration of Independence was fought di- 
rectly opposite the road upon which I was 
now riding. On August 3, 1776, Skipper Ben 
Tupper constituted himself the first Admiral 
of our Navy, and with a fleet of four sloops, 
attacked the British ships Phenix and Rose, 
fighting them for two hours, and finally driv- 
ing them below Tarrytown, within their own 
lines. This action was followed by a series of 
similar engagements to ward off the hostilities 
that for the most part were directed against 
the people of the western shore while the in- 



1 84 WINTER SKETCHES. 

habitants on the opposite side of the river 
were comparatively unmolested. 

Two or three miles below Haverstraw the 
boldness of the shore makes a road impracti- 
cable. We turned to the right, following up a 
steep hill that was to bring us over to the 
other side of the river coast range. It leads 
through a gorge, which in summer must be 
most attractive to the many tourists who 
come from the city to saunter in the shade of 
its trees and rocks. The trees, naked in win- 
ter, are clothed with verdure in the summer, 
but the rocky cliffs through which the road is 
cut, bare as they are in summer, were now 
draped in silver sheen and fringed with icy 
stalactites. 

Before we left the level, the shadows of the 
hills had fallen over the frost-bound river, 
but now that we had mounted to the summit 
we caught up with the bright light and saw 
far in the west over that hitherto undiscov- 
ered country, the snow-clad hills and valleys, 
the black forest, the straggling towns and vil- 
lages, a wide-spread panorama of surprising 
beauty, just as the last touch was being given 
to it by the setting sun. Then we descended 
the western slope and went rapidly on a iew 



UNIVERSAL HOSPITALITY. 1 85 

miles more through the valley until we came 
to another pass of the hills, through which we 
reached again the river bank at Nyack. It was 
a beautiful moonlight night, tempting to the 
merry sleigh-riders we met constantly as we 
passed through the town and its suburbs till 
we came to the house of my friend in the out- 
skirts of Piermont. 

In my travels about the world I have fre- 
quently had occasion to contrast the habits, 
manners, and social characteristics of its dif- 
ferent peoples. I have never gone among any, 
civilized or uncivilized, who were absolutely 
inhospitable. The savage is often as hospit- 
able as the Christian. I will not switch off 
from my track so far from the main route of 
this narrative as would be necessary to tell the 
story of a three months' entertainment by an 
Eastern Rajah, which would go far to estab- 
lish the universality of this charming domestic 
virtue. 

I cannot help it if the careless reader shall 
accuse us of being "dead beats " along the 
road. I sometimes think that we are. Never- 
theless, if we are asked to come again, we shall 
go, for I have arrived at the conclusion that 
there is no more genuine and sincere hospital- 



1 86 WINTER SKETCHES. 

ity in the world than among our own country- 
men, and that they never pass the Spanish 
compliment of placing everything at your 
disposal without meaning it to be strictly 
true that the house is your own for the time 
being. I found it so at Piermont, and Fanny 
found the stable exceedingly to her liking, as 
was demonstrated by her activity on the fol- 
lowing day. 

I had in years gone by wandered with my 
host through vineyards and under the shade 
of the olive trees of the Mediterranean Isles, 
and now I found him seated by the side of 
his "fruitful vine, with his own olive-plants 
around his table." Then it was burning sum- 
mer, now it was " frosty yet kindly" winter. 
There it was sunshine without. Here it was 
sunshine within. 

On the next morning the weather had mod- 
erated so that although the ice and the snow 
still maintained their grip, the sun heat was 
preparing them for a speedy dissolution, and 
the icicles, the roofs and the trees began to 
drop tears in view of their coming departure. 
The road again turns inland, passing down- 
wards several miles behind the Palisade range. 

On arrival at Tappan, a distance of four 



D UTCH PA RSONA GE. 1 8/ 

miles, I called upon the minister of the village 
church, and presenting a note from my host of 
the previous night, was cordially welcomed at 
the parsonage. It is one of those old-fashioned 
Dutch houses — Mr. Williamson could not tell 
exactly how old — that was built in the first 
part of the last century, if not even earlier, a 
solid structure of thick stone walls, large chim- 
neys, low-studded with heavy cross-beams. I 
fancy that on the library table, which like all 
the furniture including the big clock that has 
ticked with slow measured cadence dealing 
out their spans of life to the many succeeding 
dominies but still as youthful itself as the 
jolly sun upon its face, there have been vol- 
umes of sermons written in Dutch for the edi- 
fication of the crumbling bones and dust now 
in the venerable churchyard. Half a cent- 
ury ago Dutch was continued as the pulpit 
language of many churches in south-western 
New York and north-eastern New Jersey. 
Latterly these Dutch churches have been 
" Reformed " in language and doctrine, so 
that, although they have come to differ 
in no essential degree from Presbyterians, they 
retain their former name only out of regard 
to the old associations connected with it. 



1 8 8 WINTER SKE TCHES. 

Fanny went to take her ease in a stable that 
had been occupied by more generations of 
horses, than the house had held of men, now 
dead and gone, the first of which may have 
been a square-built galliot-shaped animal, im- 
ported from Holland. Then, the dominie 
having shown the yellow church records and 
other curiosities of his library, took me upon a 
walk, discoursing as we went on incidents of 
history, and particularly of those concerning 
the last days of Major Andre. 

The church in which his trial was held, was 
built in 1694, rebuilt in 1788, and replaced by 
the present structure in 1835 at a gain in size, 
but as would appear from the drawings, at a 
loss in architectural taste. The same remark 
may apply to the quaint stone-built Dutch 
house occupied by Washington as his head- 
quarters, but now, although its main part is 
left standing, disfigured by the addition of a 
flat-topped wooden wing after the modern 
style of Jersey renaissance. The present occu- 
pant unfortunately had gone away with the 
keys in his pocket, so that we could only sur- 
vey the exterior; but Mr. Williamson pointed 
out the corner room where, when the proces- 
sion passed on the way to the gallows, Wash- 



HARMLESS VENOM. 1 89 

ington sat with the curtains drawn, commun- 
ing with his own thoughts, and wishing from 
his inmost soul that the bitter cup might 
have passed from the unfortunate victim. 
And yet it was a woman, who only lacked the 
claws and the fangs of a tigress, who assailed 
him thus : 

" Oh, Washington ! I thought thee great and good, 
Nor knew thy Nero thirst of guiltless blood ! 
Severe to use the power that Fortune gave, 
Thou cool determined murderer of the brave ! 
Lost to each fairer virtue that inspires 
The genuine fervor of the patriot fires ! 
And you, the base abettors of the doom 
That sunk his blooming honors in the tomb, 
The opprobrious tomb your hardened hearts decreed, 
While all he asked was as the brave to bleed 1 
Nor other boon the glorious youth implored 
Save the cold mercy of the warrior sword ! 
O dark and pitiless ! Your impious hate 
O'erwhelmed the here in the ruffian's fate ! 
Stopt with the felon cord the rosy breath, 
And venomed with disgrace the darts of death ! 
Remorseless Washington ! the day shall come 
Of deep repentance for this barbarous doom ! 
When injured Andre's memory shall inspire 
A kindling army with resistless fire. 
Each falchion sharpens that the Britons wield, 
And lead their fiercest lion to the field ! 
Then, when each hope of thine shall set in night, 
When dubious dread and unavailing flight 



190 WINTER SKETCHES. 

Impel your host, thy guilt-upbraided soul 

Shall wish untouched the sacred life you stole, 

And when thy heart appalled, and vanquished pride 

Shall vainly ask the mercy they denied, 

With horror shalt thou meet the fate they gave, 

Nor pity gild the darkness of thy grave ! 

For infamy, with livid hand shall shed 

Eternal mildew on thy ruthless head 1 " 

The author, Miss Seward, was the friend of 
Honora Sneyd, who had discarded Andre, and 
had since married and died. That appears to 
be all of the personal motive which brought 
out this vindictive curse upon the head of 
Washington. 

Nearly opposite the house occupied by 
Washington is another stone building of 
smaller size. It was a tavern in Revolu- 
tionary times, and for the occasion, a room 
in it was used as Andre's prison. It is now 
the property of an eccentric old physician, who 
has allowed the roof to tumble in and every- 
thing to fall out of repair. Lest any visitor 
should put one of the granite blocks or one of 
the roof timbers in his pocket and walk away 
with it, the doctor has surrounded the house 
with a high board fence which even the agile 
school-boy is unable to surmount. 

We walked from the village in a westerly 



EHE U A NDRE 1 1 9 1 

direction over the road travelled by Andre to 
his doom on the 2d of October, 108 years ago. 
Of the Court of Inquiry of six Major-Generals 
and eight Brigadier-Generals that found him 
guilty and deserving of execution, Gen. Steuben 
was the only one who was disposed to be 
lenient, while Gen. Parsons, who manifested 
no mercy for him whatever, was ten months 
afterwards discovered in correspondence with 
Sir Henry Clinton, with a view of betraying 
the Continental Army. 

What a sad farewell it must have been to 
this beautiful world for one so young, before 
whom there was everything that we old men 
have left behind — for pleasant as retrospect 
may be, some clouds hang over it ; but antici- 
pation has not one dark spot upon it to dim its 
brightness. It was the most delightful season 
of the whole year, at high noon, when from the 
hill on which he stood he could see the coun- 
try far and near, clothed in all its glorious 
autumn array — the yellow fields lately reaped, 
the green pine forests, the already changing 
maples in their parti-colored dress. There 
stood the crowd around him who were yet to 
live and yet to have these scenes before them, 
who were still to inhale the balmy air of which 



I92 WINTER SKETCHES. 

in a moment more he should breathe the last ; 
and harder than all he was to die an ignomin- 
ious death with the fear that its baseness would 
ever attach to his memory. Who would not 
have pitied him, and what man could there 
have been in that assembly who would not 
have rejoiced to have seen him go free if the 
traitor Arnold could have been made to suffer 
in his stead ? 

A touching tribute to his memory, written by 
Dean Stanley on his visit to the spot, was en- 
graved on the monument lately erected there 
by one of our countrymen, but it was soon 
destroyed by some persons who were actuated 
by personal malice more than by patriotic zeal. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Through Bergen County. — Two Revolutionary 
Scenes. — A ndre"s Prophetic Lines. — A Lonely 
Inn. — The Dutch Landlord and His Family. 
— Return to Nezv York. 

PARTING from the amiable clergyman of 
Tappan with a high appreciation of his kind- 
ness, I mounted Fanny again and crossed im- 
mediately over the border line which separates 
Rockland County of New York from Bergen 
County of New Jersey. Schraalenberg was 
the first village to which we came after a ride 
of six miles, the country becoming more dis- 
tinctly Dutch as we progressed. There were 
numerous quaint old stone houses, many of 
them with huge projecting stone chimneys, 
these denoting the highest antiquity when the 
great industry of Haverstraw and Croton had 
not been exploited. It has been said that the 
early settlers imported their bricks from Hol- 
land, but I apprehend that this legend refers 
'3 193 



194 WINTER SKETCHES. 

to ornamental tiles rather than to building 
material. Of these many were brought over, 
and to this day they may be seen bordering 
the great fireplaces, where for generations the 
catechisms and texts of instruction painted 
upon them have served the purpose of the 
modern Sunday-school. There, too, are still 
the barns modelled like Noah's Ark bottom up, 
low studded like the houses, for as land was 
cheaper than it now is in Broadway, the heavy- 
moulded farmers did not care to stretch their 
legs needlessly in going up-stairs or to weary 
their arms in pitching hay. 

Everything but the landscape resembles 
Holland. That is in all its aspects totally 
different, for Bergen County, at least in its 
northern part, is not spread over a level, but 
runs from one hilltop to another. In South 
Bergen, where there are plenty of swamps, the 
Dutchman might have felt at home, but on his 
first coming here he must indeed have consid- 
ered himself a pilgrim in a strange land. How 
did he get here, anyway? Did he climb over 
the Palisades, or did he drift with the tide up 
the Hackensack ? What was he to do without 
canals ? I have noticed that in Java, where 
there are salubrious hills and mountains easily 



A DUTCH DREAM. I95 

accessible, he deliberately established himself 
on the morass at Batavia, so that he could dig 
a canal, and then die of the yellow fever con- 
tentedly. 

Why, indeed, did he not settle on the Hack- 
ensack meadows ? Why do not his country- 
men come there now ? The descendants of 
men who redeemed Holland from the sea 
could surely rescue these meadows from the 
encroachment of the Hackensack and Passaic 
Rivers. There is room enough there for a 
thousand farmers of holdings such as they 
cultivate with so much success at home. The 
land is as good and the climate as equable ; 
but it is a waste, a great area of bog. We 
may imagine it the property of a thousand 
sturdy Dutch farmers who have not yet been 
corrupted with our air of liberty and broken 
out with the eruptions of extravagance and 
discontent. We see in our fancy the dykes 
thrown up and the intersecting canals on 
which the noiseless trekschuit glides along, 
the scattered houses and barns, the church 
spires and windmills, the long avenues of 
trees, the orchards, gardens, and fields, all pos- 
sessed by a contented people. They could 
not live so cheaply here as in Holland ? Per- 



I96 WINTER SKETCHES. 

haps not in all respects just now ; but a 
change is coming. Still, will anybody tell us 
why a colony of Dutchmen, who are not am- 
bitious for luxuries they have not at home, 
and who would have a better market for their 
products than they have there, could not 
thrive under these conditions? 

I do not think that the higher altitudes they 
sought in their settlement here, improved the 
temper of the colonists. From all accounts 
they became very quarrelsome in theology and 
politics. When the Revolutionary war came, 
neighbor was pitted against neighbor even 
more ferociously than were their countrymen 
on the banks of the Hudson. But they were 
always a hard-working economical set of 
people. They made home industries pay. 
Everything they consumed, with the sole ex- 
ception of the indispensable gin, was produced 
by themselves. Men, women and children 
worked in the fields, and even the baby's 
weight was utilized in churning but'ter. 

Their descendants to-day, among whom 
their language and customs prevail more or 
less, are not in the least intimidated by the 
threats of Engineer Brotherhoods or Knights 
of Labor to play havoc with all our means of 



A BLOODY MASSACRE. 



l 97 



transportation, for they could survive without 
them, provided, of course, that a sufficient 
stock of tobacco had been laid in. And yet, 
with all their phlegm and apparent indiffer- 
ence to the outside world, they arose as one 
man when the news reached them of the first 
symptoms of a revolt against unjust taxation 
at Boston in 1774, and sent to that city their 
message of sympathy. Whatever may be true 
of other portions of the country, it seems con- 
clusive that among the farmers along the Hud- 
son and Hackensack there was from the first, 
practical unanimity in resisting this system of 
robbery, not only in council, but in arms, 
while at the same time, as in this instance of 
the address of the Bergen people, they were 
still loyal to the King. It was only when a 
part of the community thought that the object 
of the war might be accomplished without 
independence, and the other part differed with 
them, that there were deadly enemies in the 
same town, sometimes in the same house, and 
even in the same bed. 

It was about three miles from Tappan when 
we passed the spot of one of the most bloody 
massacres of the war. It was where the 
American Col. Baylor had quartered himself 



1 98' WINTER SKETCHES. 

and 116 men at the home and on the premises 
of Cornelius Haring, when some of Haring's 
Tory neighbors gave notice to the British over 
the river. Col. Grey accordingly, piloted by 
them, after crossing the Hudson, came upon 
the detachment unawares by night, and to the 
great delight of the Tories, massacred every 
one who could not make his escape. 

Riding a few miles further down, after pass- 
ing through Schraalenberg, we came near to 
the scene of the affray above Bull's Ferry, 
which, although serious and resulting in con- 
siderable loss of life on both sides, is remem- 
bered more for the comic description given of 
it by Major Andre in his poem entitled the 
"Cow Chace," in which he unmercifully ridi- 
culed Gen. Wayne. Wayne's main object 
was to dislodge a force of Tories who had 
entrenched themselves in a block-house, and 
he also desired to get possession of a lot of 
cattle for the commissariat. Andre in his 
long string of verses puts this in the mouth of 
Wayne as issuing his orders to his subordi- 
nates: 

" I, under cover of th' attack, 
Whilst you are all at blows, 
From " English neighborhood " and Tamack 
Will drive away the cows." 



HOOPER'S MURDER. 



199 



There is one stanza in this poem in which 
he writes of cold-blooded murder in such a 
rollicking style that unless, as it is charity to 
hope, he did not know what the circumstances 
were, our sympathy for the fate which befell 
him afterwards, might be entirely withdrawn, 
and men might say that his own request to 
"die without a rope" was denied him as a 
punishment for the utterance : 

"But, oh Thaddeus Possett, why 
Should thy poor soul elope, 
And why should Titus Hooper die, 
Ah, die — without a rope ! " 

Mr. Clayton says that Hooper " was mur- 
dered by the Tories under John Van de Roder, 
a neighbor, who entered his home in the night, 
and after shooting him through the head com- 
pelled his wife to hold a candle while they 
thrust nineteen bayonets into him." 

What had Hooper done? Perhaps some- 
body can tell us something that may be said 
in extenuation of the brutal conduct of Van 
de Roder, and of the inhuman rhyme of 
Andre. The closing lines are almost prophetic 
of retribution : 



200 WINTER SKETCHES. 

" And now I close my epic verse ; 
I tremble as I show it, 
Lest this same warrior-drover, Wayne, 
Should ever catch the poet. " 

Musing on all these things, for though I had 
not travelled many miles in the last two days, 
I had travelled back many years, I gave 
Fanny a loose rein and became careless of my 
road. She did not pay proper attention to the 
sign-boards, but wandered off to the right 
through some by-road of the undiscovered 
country. I think it was with instinct that she 
might find a stopping-place for our midday 
meal, for soon a little out-of-the-way Dutch 
tavern hove in sight. Why it was there I can- 
not tell. There was no neighborhood of 
houses whose tenants might frequent its bar- 
room at evening, and all the custom that could 
come to its doors must be that of the prudent 
farmers going in and coming out from market, 
men who are chary of the proceeds of their 
cabbages and potatoes. 

It must have been, as I have been, living on 
the memories of the past. Before it was a 
wide stoop, and as I pulled up alongside, I 
could see the portly landlord sitting in his 
own company by the bar-room stove, quietly 



FANNY'S MISFORTUNE. 201 

smoking his pipe. He slowly turned his head, 
but made no effort to rise and open the door. 
I dismounted and entering the house, said, 
"Good afternoon." The landlord replied, 
"Goede namiddag." "Can I have my horse 
fed?" I asked. Whereupon he called out, 
" Hannes ! Draag zorg of het paard dezer 
heer." 

The boy came forth from another room, and 
led Fanny to the stable as I followed. 

" Now," said I, after I had taken off the 
saddle and bridle, a proceeding rather above 
his comprehension, " give her four quarts of 
oats." " Wy hebben geen haver," replied the 
boy, shaking his head solemnly, by which I 
understood that there were no oats. 

"What do you feed your own horses on, 
then?" I asked, as I surveyed two melancholy 
looking skeletons staggering about the barn- 
yard. 

"Wy geven onzen paarden hooi," he an- 
swered. 

Looking in the crib, I saw some Hacken- 
sack bulrushes, and I told the boy that my 
mare would not eat such stuff. 

" Laat haar blyven voor een week Zy will 
honger genoeg hebben om it te eeten," said he. 



202 WINTER SKETCHES. 

After all, Dutch is not so very much unlike 
English. It was easy enough to understand 
this: "Let her stay a week and she will be 
hungry enough to eat it." Perhaps she might, 
but it was not more than twelve miles to New 
York, so that Fanny was not compelled to try 
the often-told experiment of the Irishman's 
horse of living without eating, of which his 
owner remarked that it was an entire success, 
but that unfortunately " just as he got cliverly 
larnt he died." I pitied her, but reminded 
her of the old song which runs : 

" There was a man who had a cow ; 
He had no hay to give her. 
He took his pipe and played the tune, 
'Consider, cow, consider."' 

I gave her a lump of sugar, and promised to 
bring her out a piece of bread to "stay her 
stomach." The landlord could wrestle some- 
what better with English than the, boy, but 
his language was very composite in its con- 
nection. He readily assented to my request 
for some dinner, but when I ventured to ask 
for a broiled chicken, having seen some fowls 
picking about the premises, he awoke from his 
stupor, and the blood coursed rapidly through 



A DUTCH VROUW. 203 

his veins. " Kip ? Myn God ! " he exclaimed. 
" Wat meant you ? Neen, neen ! If I kill een 
kip, de kip don't never be a hen, en daar won't 
be no eyeren. If I killed kippen last year, you 
don't won't get no eyeren mit your ham to- 
day !" As the French say, " he had reason." 
It was a sound argument, and I was convinced 
of its force when a very nice dish of ham and 
eggs was served by the vrouw of my landlord. 
She was a woman with a head such as Rubens 
was wont to paint, hair combed back and sur- 
mounted by a cap that might serve for day or 
night; blue eyes, rosy cheeks and lips. She 
was dressed in a short woollen gown with a 
white apron in front and nothing behind ; she 
could sit down without inconvenience to her- 
self, and she could stand up in a crowd without 
inconvenience to others. 

Two little girls, with their yellow hair braided 
and coiled on the backs of their heads, and 
held in place by high horn combs, were sitting 
on the floor, holding and balling up a skein of 
yarn, and that uncarpeted floor was as clean as 
the table-cloth and the bright ware upon it. 
Surrounded by these pretty pictures, which 
seemed to have been taken from their frames 
and spread about for my entertainment, I dined 



204 WINTER SKETCHES. 

most agreeably ; and I may add that the feast 
was moistened with a glass of choice Holland 
gin, which the landlord informed me that he 
did not sell, but sometimes gave to himself. 
Poor Fanny had in the meantime employed 
herself in pulling the sedge from the crib, and 
trampling it under her feet in disgust. It was 
her worst experience upon the journey. 

The warm afternoon sun had played havoc 
with the " beautiful snow," turning it into yel- 
low water, which choked the gutters and over- 
flowed the roads, and when we reached the 
main thoroughfare all was slush and mud. 
Wading through it, we came to the toll-bridge 
over the Hackensack, and then to another toll- 
gate at the causeway turnpike, and so on to 
a Jersey driveway in feeble imitation of New 
York avenues, with like shingle road-houses 
and rows of sheds. We were no longer in the 
country, but among unpaved and unmacada- 
mized streets lined with saloons and breweries. 
Huge lager-beer wagons, drawn by elephantine 
horses and driven by animated beer casks, 
splashed along. Then we came to the taper- 
ing backbone of the Palisade range, which 
finally loses itself at Hoboken, and, crossing 



WEE HA WKEN AND FINIS. 2 05 

it, descended at Weehawken amid excavations 
mud, filth, and wet coal dust, over a gridiron 
of railway tracks, to the -old ferry," which 
took us to New York. 



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